Genius of Masks
by Picklesticks
Summary: There's a lot more going on in Gai's head than most people suspect. His preoccupation with youth, his eccentric mannerisms, they're all a mask of a different kind. Gai x Lee
1. The Genius of Masks

Title: Genius of MasksAuthor: Picklesticks  
Pairing: Unresolved Gai+Lee  
Rating: PG  
Genre: Angst  
Summary: There are many types of genius in Konoha. This is Gai's.  
Author's Notes: Gai angst. LOLWHUT. I got the idea for this a while ago -- when I first saw how bad his memory supposedly is. It made me go "No way, he's totally faking that" because I just can't believe that someone that dumb could actually survive as a jounin. It makes a lot more sense for him to be doing it deliberately to get people to underestimate him, and it certainly seems to work!

* * *

People in Konoha tend to spread the word 'genius' around very liberally, but very few of them have ever thought of applying the word to Maito Gai.

Hatake Kakashi is a technique genius, thanks to the sharingan that lets him learn so many. Nara Shikamaru is a strategy genius – after all, things are easier to do when you do them as efficiently as possible. Tsunade-sama is a healing genius, one of the best the world has ever seen. Rock Lee – Gai's own precious, beloved Lee – is a genius of hard work, to the point where he can and does put his teacher to shame with his dedication.

Maito Gai is a genius of masks.

Say "masked jounin" and most people will think of Kakashi. It's natural, after all. But his mask is plain to see, and sometimes it has to be removed, and it only partially and imperfectly conceals his face. Gai's mask is invisible – that is the first genius of it. The mask that is in itself masked. People who know him tend to think that he is incapable of concealing his emotions, that everything he feels he expresses. They think that everything that crosses his face is genuine, is real and true and shows what he feels, thinks, is.

He likes it that way.

People see smiles and enthusiasm, certainty, confidence, cheerfully zany behavior, an apparent inability to process the realities of the world around him, a memory that rates somewhere on the 'goldfish' level. They see the 'nice guy pose' and an obsession with youth that, while somewhat disturbing, is ultimately harmless and amusing. That's the mask. When Kakashi – currently the only person who truly knows about Gai's mask genius – first found out about the mask, his natural assumption was to think that those things, if they were the mask, must be pure pretense.

That's the second genius of Gai's mask.

It's real. Well, perhaps not the swiss-cheese memory. That started out many years ago as a joke that somehow simply never faded, and Gai finds it useful. When your enemies underestimate you, it's always advantageous. But it amuses him that everyone thinks he's really that unintelligent. You can't be a jounin – more to the point, you can't survive as a jounin – unless you're mentally keen. It just goes to show how good his mask is, that people don't question. But the rest of it – the idealism, the enthusiasm, the antics, the obsession – they're all real. They just aren't the whole story.

Kakashi is perhaps the only person to know this, and he is certainly the only one around whom Gai has lowered the mask in years. Over a decade. Even the mask genius has to remind himself every few years that there is something under the mask, otherwise he lives with the danger of forgetting his own face.

Of all the different kinds of experts among ninja, taijutsu specialists tend to lead the shortest lives. Because they fight always up close and personal with their enemies – directly in harm's way – and because they rely first and foremost on their physical bodies, which suffer gravely from the ravages of age, rather than chakra techniques that can be practiced as well at fifty as at fifteen, the years attack them with a vengeance. The ten years between a taijutsu specialist's thirtieth and fortieth birthdays are known as the "deadly decade" – very few, even (or perhaps _especially_) jounin, will live to see forty unless they retire. And Maito Gai will never retire.

He's just turned twenty-nine. For the average shinobi, that's somewhat past the halfway point of life. For Gai, it means the end may very well be near. True to his mask-genius, he hides the knowledge of his own mortality under a cartoonish, amusing obsession with youth. The substitution is deft. People laugh and joke about Gai being a pedophile; the truth is, he wishes he could show his students how to value their years of full physical fitness. People joke about Gai being afraid to grow old. The truth is, he's afraid of not living long enough to.

And deep down, he's afraid for Lee, too. As a sixteen-year-old taijutsu specialist, Lee is probably about half done with his life. Gai has never shied away from teaching the boy about his own mortality, teaching him techniques that can or will kill him and making sure he knows the consequences. But in this case, he can't – it touches a little too close to his own fears, his own carefully-masked knowledge that his life may very well be drawing to a close even now. If he told Lee, well – Lee's not stupid either. He doesn't know Gai's precise age – that lives under the mask – but he can estimate well enough. Well enough to know how few years his sensei has left, barring a miracle.

And Gai doesn't want Lee to know that, because it's no secret how Lee feels about him. It isn't all that unusual for a student to come of age, and then promptly climb into their sensei's bed. Some people even consider it healthy, a first sexual relationship with someone who does care, with someone who has spent years with the student's wellbeing in mind. Better than an anonymous encounter, better than two virgins fumbling together. Less chance of 'accidents' spreading disease or teenage pregnancy. And if things were different, there would be no problem. Gai adores Lee, and if they had all the time in the world, he would take him as a lover in a heartbeat. But is it kindness to create those deep bonds when you know that with each passing day, the odds of you being torn violently from your precious person only increase? It's less than a year now – three hundred fifty-two days, to be precise – until he enters that deadly decade.

Over the course of his training, Lee has broken almost everything in his body at least once. Gai doesn't want to be the one to break his heart.


	2. The Lives of the Great Taijutsu Masters

Author's Note: This is my first attempt at writing Lee's POV, and my first real attempt to get things into Lee's voice. (The last chapter was actually written in Kakashi's voice, even though it was Gai-centric). Lee isn't a very strong voice of mine, so I would really appreciate feedback on that in particular. Did I do a good job capturing him, or is he too bland?

This chapter is, by the way, mostly plot setup. This is a dangerous sign.

* * *

For his sixteenth birthday, Tenten gave Lee a book. _The Lives of the Great Taijutsu Masters, _a volume he'd desperately longed for. It profiled twenty of the greatest hand-to-hand fighters Konoha had ever known, giving intense, lovingly detailed attention to every aspect of their lives, including when they'd started, details of their training and rise through the ranks of the Leaf-nin, and the training regimens they followed in order to achieve their great victories. These were the men who had refined themselves to such a great extent that they were graced with the title, not simply of taijutsu _specialists, _but rather _Masters. _They had taken the art and made it their own.

It was an old book, as such things went; published around the time of the Fourth Hokage's accession to the title. Lee was certain that was the only reason that his beloved Gai-sensei was not one of those twenty. He would only have been a child then, perhaps a genin at most. But he'd found out – not from Gai-sensei himself, who had never even hinted at the book's existence, but of all people from Gai-sensei's Great Rival, Kakashi – that Gai-sensei's own sensei was one of the _Masters _the book referred to. Well of course, once he found out, he absolutely had to have it. The prospect of learning more about the man who had shaped and taught his precious Gai-sensei excited Lee beyond all measure, but he refused to simply flip ahead. He was reading the book to learn how he could improve himself as a shinobi! Not just feeding his fascination with his sensei. Plus, while Gai-sensei's rival had been perfectly willing to tell him that the man's life was chronicled in that particular book, he had somehow regrettably neglected to mention the name. And Gai-sensei never talked about the past. So, Lee would simply have to read each and every biography with careful attention to detail – not that he wouldn't anyway! – in order to find the one he had particular interest in. He was convinced that somehow, he'd know the moment he turned to the right page – that the person who had such a wonderful honor as being the jounin sensei to Maito Gai, of all people, would be immediately distinguished by every aspect of his life. He must have been a magnificent, an amazing shinobi!

He finished the third chapter. This wasn't the right one – for one thing, far too old, a jounin from the days of the Nidaime, and he'd died young. Surprisingly young, actually, for someone who was considered to have thoroughly mastered his craft and even pioneered powerful new techniques. Shinobi had generally shorter lifespans than civilians, true, but genius shinobi tended to live longer, particularly during peacetimes; this man had died at thirty-two. Younger than average.

Now that he had noted that as an aberration, he went back and rechecked the ends of the previous two chapters. One had retired at thirty-five after a massive attack shattered his leg beyond repair – Lee repressed a shiver, remembering and then repressing the thought of a crushing viselike grip on his own limbs – and the other had died in battle at thirty-eight. A pattern was starting to form. He was tempted to skip ahead now, to read just the end of each chapter, to confirm his hunch now, when it was nagging at him with burning immediacy. This was only three out of twenty jounin profiled in this book, and it was perfectly reasonable to think that they might not be a truly representative sample. It could simply be a clustering, a coincidence. But he wasn't going to flip ahead for this, either – it would be just as bad, maybe even worse, to skim past the tremendous accomplishments that these shinobi had made to Konoha, in search of merely the date at which their accomplishments ceased. He would show them the proper respect, reading through their entire life stories to learn what they had to teach, and only at the end would he let himself see the age at which they had run into the unbeatable foe, or hung up their combat credentials and retired. Of all the people – well, except Gai-sensei, who always took the number one place in Lee's eyes – these, more than others, deserved deep respect, especially from a disciple of their same discipline.

He checked the clock, mindful of the time at which he would have to arise in the morning. There was time perhaps for one more chapter, if he read attentively but not slowly. He needed his sleep, after all, if he wanted to train to his full potential tomorrow. If he didn't rest adequately, his body would be at less than a perfect readiness, and he refused to let himself become weakened in the eyes of his teammates or Gai-sensei.

One more, then. Another jounin from Nidaime's era, known for the harshness of his personal training regimen – at least, that's what the book said. Lee found himself somewhat perplexed by the author's insistence that this man had been anything out of the ordinary for a taijutsu shinobi. After all, his own training regimen wasn't that much less intense! Perhaps, he thought to himself, the author was not a taijutsu specialist, was not familiar with the way they pushed their bodies to the utmost. Ninjutsu and genjutsu users pushed their chakra limits, some of them barely moving a muscle other than to perform hand seals, but the taijutsu master exercised his body to exhaustion, building it up until that exhaustion took hours to approach. That minor quibble aside, though, the jounin's personal habits had certainly paid off – he had made a name for himself even before he reached the rank, while still a chuunin, and after attaining jounin rank he went on to cover himself in glory during a shortlived war with a large, dangerously well-organized group of missing-nin. The list of accomplishments covered in the eleven months of the war made Lee's eyes pop. Taijutsu Master, indeed!

_Sadly, _the next page started, _like so many of those who choose the taijutsu path, his star burned brilliant and hot, but with a tragically short flame. Barely three months after the annihilation of the traitors' leadership and the execution of most of the criminals in question, Yamayoshi Isami was given an S-class extraction mission. Certain items, the nature of which is at this time still classified, were stolen by remnants of the criminal group. The mission plan, as much of it as can be determined, was essentially straightforward. Yamayoshi would infiltrate the location, extract the items and hand them off to a waiting courier, then cover the courier's swift return to Konohagakure with the items. While the mission itself is recorded as successful, with the classified items all returned in good condition, Yamayoshi himself never returned, and it is believed that he died while securing the courier's return. He was slightly less than a month shy of his thirty-fourth birthday, and left behind two sons..._

Another one. Lee bit his lip, frowning; he wasn't sure what to think. Four out of twenty, a full fifth of these Great Taijutsu Masters, had died or been permanently crippled in their thirties. Young, for shinobi. And what had the author meant, _like so many of those who choose the taijutsu path_? Was it... common, then, for taijutsu specialists to die young? Gai-sensei had never mentioned such a thing, and the Hyuuga certainly didn't die off young – then again, most of the Hyuuga adults he knew of were retired. Aside from Neji and Hinata, there were only three who were on active combat duty, and they were all in their teens or twenties.

Still, it might be nothing more than coincidence. This was not a large enough sample to be sure of anything, and the author had already revealed by playing up what was to Lee not a ridiculous training regimen that he perhaps didn't know everything about taijutsu specialists in general. Leaping to conclusions from incomplete information was something every shinobi was trained against. So what would be the proper response to this? To gather more information, of course! Lee would get to the bottom of this strange trend, would learn just why these four Great Masters had suffered such an early end to their careers.

In the morning. Now, it was late, and he needed at least seven hours' sleep before he headed out the next day. He was tired, and if he was tired tomorrow while he trained, he would make mistakes – and he refused to make mistakes. Feeling more confident now that he had a plan, instead of just a worry, he set the book down and turned out the light, settling under his covers and falling asleep almost immediately.


	3. The Bestseller

A/N: Originally, I started writing this as a side story, to explore just why it was that Chapter One got narrated by my Kakashi voice. But with the way Chapter Four is shaping up, I realized that this would actually be a valuable addition, in terms of getting things set up for what's coming in the future. Not to mention, I love Gai and Kakashi's character interaction. 3 Expect Chapter Four in a few days!

* * *

At some point, now long in the past, Gai and Kakashi might have become lovers. The similarities between them, which they've both been able to see since their very first meeting, actually make some people think for the longest time that they are lovers, and Gai's amusing habit of challenging Kakashi practically every time they meet reinforces that belief. But the real possibility of it is now long in the past. Too many losses have left the Copy-Nin unwilling to give his heart to a fellow jounin, one who will undergo the same risks he does – particularly Gai, of all people, because Kakashi knows about the taijutsuist deadly decade as well as his green-clad counterpart does. And Gai, for his part, prefers the youthful company of his team and his cheerful, almost insane pretense that he is as young as they. It's better than taking a lover of his own age, one whose very presence will remind him of the years flowing by, bringing him ever closer to that day when his body will no longer follow his commands with all the strength and speed he demands of it, when he'll finally encounter the enemy given the advantage, not disadvantage, by youth.

But sometimes, it seems like the friendly ebbing of the once-powerful sexual tension between them has been a good thing overall, because in its place it leaves an easy understanding that lets them trust each other in a way they can't trust anyone else, a sense of ease that doesn't necessarily need to be expressed in honest words. They both wear masks, although Kakashi's is made of cloth and Gai's is made of smiles, and they both allow each other occasional glimpses beneath those masks. In a way, they even function as safety valves for each other. When Kakashi starts slipping too far into brooding, passing too many hours at the memorial stone and letting his personal darkness eat into him too far, Gai dreams up particularly ridiculous challenges and flowery speeches until Kakashi is forced to smile. And when Gai's smiles get too brittle, his ornate words and half-crazed cheer get too forced, Kakashi drags him off to a quiet place where he can let down the exhausting act and quietly release the more serious feelings underneath.

So when Kakashi first starts taking an interest in the chuunin schoolteacher who actually had the stones to stand up to him and question his handling of his team, Gai's the first one to notice it, and in between the lines of a very flowery speech on the Beauty of True Love, he manages to slip in the genuine advice that Iruka might be exactly the right person for Kakashi. As a teacher, he's almost never sent on missions, and because he's a chuunin, the missions he does take are rarely the most dangerous ones – in a sense, he's "safe" for Kakashi to care about, but he's also clearly brave and determined enough to keep up with the Copy-Nin in terms of personality.

And when Gai starts noticing that Lee isn't a little boy anymore, he's grown into a very strong young man and, at least in Gai's eyes, a very attractive one (Kakashi is of the opinion that Gai's sense of aesthetics is a little warped), the white-haired jounin reminds him that student-teacher relationships are not particularly taboo among ninja, so long as the student in question is of age, and that Lee's crush on Gai started several years ago at 'hard to miss' and has only gotten more and more obvious since then. The first reminder comes in the form of a book that Gai most certainly did _not _purchase suddenly appearing on his nightstand, and the second from a slightly _too _casual observation that Lee has barely spoken to Sakura at all in the past few months, and that anytime he's asked about – well, _anything _– the immediate answer always involves Gai in some way, shape or form. The book, Gai discovers, is an anthology of (erotic, naturally – it _is _a gift from Kakashi, after all) stories about teachers and students falling in love; a handwritten note on the inside of the cover, signed with a henohenomoheji, tells him that it's made the bestseller lists in every major hidden village. He's very uncertain about it at first, as he really is not in the habit of reading such things, and he's rather uncertain about encouraging his own somewhat unorthodox feelings for his protégé. But he doesn't get rid of the book, and it's almost inevitable that he eventually opens it, more out of curiosity than anything else. He likes some of the stories more than others, of course; one could practically have been written about him and Lee, and it's with a feeling of near-guilt that he considers it the most moving of them all. The stories aren't mindless porn, and apart from (or really, _including, _if Gai is honest with himself) the rather detailed scene in which the underdog student "thanks" the teacher who has always stood by him and taught him to shine, it is lyrical and achingly bittersweet. He wonders if the pseudonymous author is in the same position, either as student or sensei; it seems as though it could only have been written by someone who has experienced the same feelings of conflict that Gai himself is going through.

Not that long after Gai delivers his impassioned speech about the Beauty of Love, which between the lines is really about how Kakashi really ought to at least try flirting with Iruka occasionally because they could be really good together, the Copy-Nin is noticed to be haunting the academy building, and rumors begin to quietly circulate. A few days after Gai hears about that, Kakashi comes looking for him.

"Consider it a challenge," he offers in his offhand voice, not looking up from the latest volume of Icha Icha. "I got what I was looking for, after all. And if I can manage to ask out the guy who called me several nasty names to my face, then it should be easy for you to ask the guy—" he pointedly avoids using any reference to Lee's young age or his status as Gai's student, "—the guy who thinks you hung the moon." Of course, Gai thinks to himself, it's easy for Kakashi to sound so very cool about it – he has the overly languorous, satisfied, smug bearing of someone who has recently gotten very thoroughly laid. He's gotten what he wants, and from the sound of it, it isn't a one-time thing, either. But in a way, he thinks, it's easier for Kakashi. With no previous connection between them, other than the vague one of Kakashi's current team being Iruka's former students, Kakashi had nothing to lose by asking. Gai has quite a bit -- the relationship between him and Lee is already complex and precious to him, and the prospect of damaging it haunts him. He doesn't voice it in quite that fashion – this isn't "mask down" time – but rather voices a concern about the purity of youth being a precious blossom that should not be abused. Kakashi laughs at that. "Pure? How many teenage shinobi do you honestly think are all that 'pure'? He's got the same hormones as everyone else, you know." The hand not holding his book makes an obscene gesture. "And he—" Gai interrupts him sharply, trying to drown out the sentence. "—just like everyone else, too."

Gai's problem isn't truly that he thinks Lee is all that "pure" in the sense Kakashi means. He's gone on extended missions with him, after all – both Lee and Neji have on occasion indulged themselves when they thought the rest of the team asleep. The purity he means is a different kind, one that's harder to describe but he nevertheless feels he may forever sully by reaching out to his student in a sexual fashion. It's getting harder to resist, though, as Kakashi encourages him and Lee fills out the beginning of manhood – and legality. At first, Gai had thought he could protect Lee from his own desires, but more and more, he's wondering if that's really the case.

It's getting harder and harder to say no, to pretend he doesn't see that the hero-worship has taken on a decidedly romantic undertone. Sooner or later, he knows he's going to crumble.


	4. The Revelation

A/N: Okay, something a little experimental going on here. I wanted to keep the abstracted tone of the earlier chapters, which doesn't really jibe well with dialogue, and I didn't want to spend the majority of the chapter on little pleasantries and trying to fit this all into Lee's speech patterns. So the interaction is more... dialogue overview, I guess. Either way, a MAJOR shout out to JantraLJ for proofreading and helping me with this chapter -- she did some major rewriting for some parts of it, and talked me through what exactly I was picturing and how to make it work right within the format of the chapter.

As always, I heart feedback like nobody's business -- especially constructive feedback. Don't like the formatting? Don't like my dialogue experiment? Think it could be improved? Please let me know!

* * *

Kakashi has many sources of information around the village, some of them more esoteric than others; as a result, he often knows things when people thing he should have had no way of finding out. It's good for his image, and he rather likes the impression of omniscience. But in the end, it really does involve simple listening and observing, as well as a certain amount of reasoning.

So when he hears that Lee has received the book he suggested, he gives it a few days, then waits to hear the results. Despite Lee's tendency to emulate Gai, he's no more an idiot than Gai is, and Kakashi is quite confident he'll pick up the thread of commonality in the biographies, and ask about it.

What surprises him is that Lee comes to ask him. Kakashi has naturally expected that as in everything else, Lee's first act will be to turn to his beloved Gai-sensei for the answers. It makes sense, first of all because that's how Lee's normal behavior pattern works, but also because Gai is a taijutsuist, and the book and Lee's questions should be about taijutsuists? Why ask the Copy-nin? Besides, Kakashi has already gotten it all worked out in his head; a fiendishly simple plan. Lee reads the book, notices that nearly nine out of ten taijutsuists die quite young, asks Gai who finally stops pussyfooting around the issue and 'fesses up, Lee realizes that he'd better make a grab for what he wants sooner rather than later, if he wants any time to enjoy it, and then right on to the happy ending, condoms and lube included. Why shouldn't such a plan work? It's got all the markings of it. By all rights, that should be what happens. But Lee comes to him with that hesitant question, instead, looking much more subdued than normal.

Kakashi is leaning against a tree, book in hand, although his entire attention is focused on the nervous green-clad boy in front of him. Lee is quiet when he speaks, respectfully polite as always, but uncharacteristically hesitant, uncertain in his statements – he probably has a pretty good idea of what Kakashi's reply is going to be, and he doesn't want to hear it. That's natural. No one wants to hear that their life expectancy is much shorter than what they originally thought. Kakashi, all innocence, asks what is bothering Lee.

_I read the book you suggested to me, Kakashi-sensei._ _Or really, started reading it. I'm only partway through._

_Oh? _ _Are you finding it helpful? _

_Oh, yes, it's wonderful! These are all very admirable shinobi, all of them, and I'm honored to be following in their footsteps. But there is something that is troubling me. _ _I've only read the first four chapters, but it seems to me that these shinobi seem to die very young, although they are considered masters of their craft. _Now that Lee has verbalized – most likely for the first time, judging by his behavior – what he sees, he looks even more concerned. Gai really should have explained this to him, Kakashi thinks with a flash of annoyance. It's his own almost obsessive preoccupation with avoiding death, and probably the fact that he's come very close to losing Lee more than once, that has held him back from doing so, and now Kakashi has to fill in.

But explain he does, with Lee jotting down notes in an extremely neat, efficient hand. He tries to phrase it as gently as he can – after all, he doesn't want to traumatize the boy, simply enlighten him. He explains a great deal: the way long-term taijutsu use can weaken the body, even damage it – opening the Gates is a foremost example of techniques that cause severe wear and tear on physical systems. He explains the deadly decade, including the tradition for taijutsuists to stop celebrating their birthday after the twenty-ninth, and lasting until the fortieth. A taijutsuist who reaches his fortieth birthday traditionally throws a large celebration, as though to mock death. He **doesn't **explain Gai's unusually strong feelings of dread, or really anything relating to Gai's behavior – Lee needs to find out those things firsthand. But he does explain a lot, and from the look in Lee's eyes, he's also making some connections that Gai didn't explicitly present. Not a surprise – he may be a "chip off the crazy block" as Kakashi has heard him called more than once, but he isn't stupid by any means, and he has been very close to Gai, very observant of him, for years now. He can connect the dots almost as well as Kakashi.

There is a long silence when Kakashi finishes his explanation. Lee's gaze is turned inward, analyzing and processing the information he's just absorbed. It's a lot to take in at once, especially since so much of it relates directly to Lee himself, and even more of it relates directly to Lee's precious, beloved Gai-sensei. Being told that you've most likely lived nearly half your life already can be hard to accept for someone who is still young enough to believe, deep down inside, that he's immortal. There really isn't a way to soften that blow, and Kakashi takes a sort of perverse pleasure in not particularly trying. _Life as a shinobi isn't easy, kid. You have to grab it with both hands and wring out as much living as you can in the short years you get. _He's quite sure Lee got that message buried beneath the cool words, and he hopes the chuunin will see, underneath that underneath, the deepest message of them all.

_Grab Gai soon, now, so you can get every last minute you can with him. _

"Thank you," Lee says finally, with a very polite bow. "That was very informative; you've given me a lot to think about."He sounds shaken but not disheartened; Lee is probably one of the most stubborn shinobi in Konoha, although he thankfully rarely indulges that tendency outside of his own training regimen. Kakashi trusts that he won't lose strength from this.

"No problem," Kakashi's manner is still casual, elaborately so, as he glances up from his book for a moment. "Just remember what I've said."

"I will." Lee exchanges a few subtly strained pleasantries with him, then turns to go; Kakashi guesses he probably is supposed to meet his team for training soon. They seem to usually train at about this time. Technically, he should be heading over to the missions room to get his next assignment, but he doesn't feel like going quite yet. The sun is shining, it's a beautifully warm and pleasant day, and the best way to spend it is outside with a book.

Or, you know, spying on your best friend and seeing if your most recent attempt to kickstart his love life will wind up bearing fruit.


	5. Honey and the Ladder

Lee knows he will have to talk to Gai-sensei about the things he has just heard from Kakashi. At first, it seems very hard to believe – hard to accept, but the more he thinks about it, the more it begins to make a terrible sort of sense.

Taijutsu, particularly Strong Fist, is very hard on the body; Lee knows this and has known this since the beginning, when he finished his first day of training with a twisted ankle. He has never allowed it to stop him, that knowledge, not even when Gai teaches him techniques that, if used properly, will kill him along with his enemies. Opening the Cosmic Gates will shorten his lifespan; opening the Eighth will kill him. It is inevitable, and Gai has drilled that lesson into his head along with the precise way to do it. To open the Eighth Gate is to commit suicide as surely as plunging a sword into one's heart; it is a technique to be used only in the most desperate circumstances. And the other Gates are not safe either; it is quite possible to die with only seven, six, or perhaps even only five Gates opened, if the force of the energy flooding his body is enough to overwhelm his heart.

Lee's metaphorical heart – the Will of Fire that burns so very brightly in his spirit – is strong, but the physical organ that beats in his chest is a different sort of heart. Nothing more than muscle, it can be overwhelmed by his own demands upon it. It can be forced to work so hard that it swells and bursts. That is one of the dangers to a taijutsuist, one that he has long since accepted. He knows the Cosmic Gates are only for times of severe necessity, and he has not yet been called to go above the Fifth.

But it has not before directly occurred to him that the damage can be so stealthily cumulative. Once an injury heals, he is accustomed to throwing himself right back into training, with no more notice or tolerance for weakness from the healed limb. Healed is healed, and he won't coddle himself; there's no strength in that. Gai has taught him to be uncompromising. To think that isn't the case – to think that even an injury that is long gone can leave its mark on him and undermine him, it's an uncomfortable thought. To think that one day, all those wounds collected over years of fighting will rise up and bring him down, worse. He doesn't want it to be true. He doesn't want it to be the fate he has to look forward to – fate, that's always been Neji's word, not his. Lee makes his own fate, and his own fate has no room for weakness!

_One day, all those injuries will catch up with me. They will weaken me more severely than any single wound I take in battle. When that day comes, my own body will betray me and I will die. _The thought is chilling, but he can't banish it from his mind.

Then a new extrapolation comes. He remembers Sakura mentioning – complaining, really – that Kakashi insists in imbuing everything he says with multiple layers of meaning, so that he conveys much more than the words he speaks. It's a different way of teaching. When Gai speaks, his words are like honey – clear, so that you can see the message easily and immediately, but they can be spread to cover every situation in life. When Kakashi speaks, it's like climbing down a ladder. You stand at the top, and things look a certain way, but then you lower your foot and there's another rung, another layer of meaning, and another one below that and below that.

_He said that taijutsu damages the body and shortens the lifespan. Meaning that the great deal of damage I take will shorten my lifespan even more severely than some. What else can I glean from his words? _

Lee may not be accustomed to reading multiple levels of meaning into the training he receives – Gai simply does no operate that way – but he isn't stupid, either. He can manage to look 'underneath the underneath' just fine.

_If my lifespan is more severely shortened than that of other shinobi, then I have to start __**living **__sooner, and with greater intensity. That way, when I die, I will have no regrets, because I will not have left the things I wish to do undone. I cannot assume there will be plenty of time for me to achieve everything. _The thought is intensely uncomfortable, and his mind tries to shy away from it, but he forces his thoughts to the same discipline he forces on his body: if it is uncomfortable, do it again. Don't shrink back and stay only with what is easy. To do so is weakness.

He will have to reach out and take what he wants, sooner rather than later. He cannot sit back and wait for it all to come to him. He's achieved the rank of chuunin, slightly behind his yearmates from the Academy; some of them are already jounin, including Neji. He will have to train harder to catch up to them, because it is utterly unacceptable for him to achieve jounin rank, only to discover that his entire youth has slipped away in the achieving.

And then a darker thought occurs to him. _If my time is more severely curtailed than I used to think, what of Gai-sensei? How much time does he have left? _Offhand, he doesn't know how old his mentor is. It occurs to him only now, as he tries to think of it, that Gai has rather carefully avoided any mention of his age, any reminder of just how long he has been serving Konoha with his powerful, destructive abilities. Lee knows, though, that Gai is most likely in his mid to late twenties, at the very least. And Kakashi said that thirty was the beginning of the danger zone.

It seems fundamentally wrong to think of anything having the power to take him down. Gai is so strong, so capable, so determined... it is he who has raised Lee to laugh in the face of the limitations the world tries to place on him. How can Lee, even in the privacy of his own mind, think of Gai being subject to a limitation of age? Gai has never treated Lee as though he's limited by the inability to mold chakra outside his own body, that he's somehow less capable of being a shinobi because his abilities lie in different directions. And look where that confidence, that refusal to accept limitation, has gotten him! Lee is a respectable chuunin with an impressive track record for mission successes.

Just because most taijutsuists die or retire in their thirties, Lee tells himself, doesn't mean that Gai will, or that he himself will, or for that matter that Neji or Tenten will. They are Team Gai, and Team Gai is above average in every respect. He will not do his teammates the disrespect of assuming their abilities to be shortened to such a limited span of years, and he will not do himself that disfavor, and, he tells himself sternly, he will certainly think no such thing of Gai-sensei. Is it not Gai himself who has told Lee over and over that youth is a state of the mind and spirit, much more than a state of the body?

With this resolution firmly in mind, he arrives at Team Gai's preferred training field; as usual, he is quite early for the day's training session, although somewhat less so than usual. Lee's normal goal is to arrive an hour before the others, so that he can spend extra time warming up and going through strength training exercises, and so he can have one-on-one training sessions with Gai before Tenten and Neji arrive. There is nothing in the world that thrills him as much as sparring with Gai, especially as he's reaching his later teen years and starting to come into the full flower of his strength. The two of them are so evenly matched, so similar in how they fight and how they approach strategy, that their bouts are almost like dancing, in deadly earnest and with a use of force that would be deadly for lesser people.

By the time Gai arrives, Lee has finished his warm-up exercises and is in the middle of the Floating Leaf kata. His body seems weightless as he twists and strikes, a look of intense concentration on his face. It's a difficult kata, because it is almost entirely aerial, so Lee must not only manage every motion of it perfectly, he must make each landing and leap perfect – to do otherwise risks sprained ankles or worse. His body feels free and loose, muscles warm and limber, blood rushing merrily through his veins. Kakashi's words, spoken in that calm, measured, almost meditative tone, have faded into the back of his mind for the moment, submitting to the power of physical exercise.

Lee knows the moment Gai arrives; he always does, because suddenly, everything changes. A new spark of energy fills his body, his heart begins to pound harder, thudding in his ears, his motions take on an extra snap, and his blood starts to sing. Intellectually, he knows it is an emotional reaction to detecting his sensei's chakra presence, but he likes to think of it as every fiber of his being crying out in joy and attuning itself to Gai's presence. He always does his best when Gai is watching; Gai is his encouragement, his inspiration, his idol, and he wants to make him proud. And, now that he's getting a bit older, old enough to understand amorous and erotic desires, he wants to please him in other ways as well. Gai's bed is empty; he wants to fill it, to offer his mentor and savior that surcease from loneliness, and to .

But as they begin to spar today, the exhilarating feeling of letting loose, of fully and truly testing his strength against the one person who is truly his match and maybe still his superior in that regard, simply isn't there. Lee finds he can't slip into the mental calm and intense focus he usually finds in these sessions. Kakashi's words come roaring back into the forefront of his mind, and he catches himself analyzing Gai's movements. Do his attacks have the same force they did a year ago? Does his body have the same snap to it, the same intense precision of movement? Is he as flexible? do his muscles retain the same limber grace, or has age started to stiffen him?

Lee is horrified with himself, but he cannot stop. _How long until my precious person, my Gai-sensei, is taken from me forever? _


	6. Breaking Focus

A/N: Lordy, the saga of this chapter... I'm sorry for the delay, gang. Here's the short version: wrote it up, typed it up, sat back at 3 am literally EIGHT DAYS AGO, thought to myself, 'I'll proofread it and upload it in the morning...'

And then woke up the next morning with a dead hard drive. Completely, utterly, totally fucking DEAD. As in, the little spinnies that make the disk spin were broken. You cannot even begin to imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth that ensued. All in all, sending it off to my uni's tech support and getting a new hard drive loaded with all the school's goodies took me until Tuesday, and then I had to completely rewrite this chapter AND make up all the work that I had missed in a weekend of not having my precious compy. So it's taken me till now to get it retyped. Extra-long, though, and with some nice little goodies at the end!

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One of the things Gai has always admired most about Lee is his utter determination and focus. When he has a goal in mind, whether it is short-term or long, he throws his entire effort, his entire will, his entire being into achieving it. Gai has never, ever seen Lee get distracted – not on missions, not during training, not when he is doing something so simple as reading a book. It is that focus that made Gai willing to take him on as a student in the first place; anyone can have determination, but Lee holds his determination in the forefront of his mind and doesn't let himself be pulled away from it. Because of that, he can work tirelessly when anyone else would fall by the wayside and fail. It's been one of the great constants of life, the past few years. Lee's purity of purpose is one of the young man's most beautiful traits.

But today, all that has changed. Something has affected Lee on such a profound level that it has broken his singleminded concentration, thoroughly shattered it – Gai can see it clearly in the way Lee moves as they spar. He isn't paying attention to what Gai's doing, and more importantly, he isn't paying attention to what his own body is doing. At the level of taijutsu he's capable of – the level at which they are currently working – the forces involved are more than enough to rip muscle and shatter bone if a blow lands wrongly. Lee's inattentiveness could end up severely injuring, possibly even crippling him.

Gai doesn't want to see that. He's never held Lee back from the dangers inherent in taijutsu – in fact, he's considered it his duty to make sure that Lee is accustomed to physical pain, by forcing him to the very limits of what his body can handle. But there is a difference between the pain that comes from honest work, from straining the body, and the pain that comes from a potentially crippling injury.

Time and time again, Gai lands blows he shouldn't be able to, dodges ill-timed attacks of the sort he hasn't seen from Lee in years, and blocks hits that should have flung him across the practice field. Lee's inattention is painfully obvious, and they both know it. He can see in those wide, dark eyes that Lee is fully conscious of his sub-par performance, and that it's feeding into whatever maelstrom of inner turmoil is already holding Lee back. A vicious cycle.

Finally, a flat-palmed blow that shouldn't have even come close to Lee, let alone have been allowed to connect at full force, throws the young chuunin back against a tree trunk, and Gai pauses, gesturing for the bout to end. He doesn't pull his blow – he has not pulled blows against Lee in years, not wanting to let his pupil get accustomed to only a halfhearted defense. It's harsh, yes, but it's also a part of his love for Lee – he does no spare him from the rigors of training, because that would be disrespect in the face of Lee's incredible dedication. Normally, the full use of Gai's massive strength is of little concern – Lee is just as strong, or near enough to it, and he can absorb, block, or evade those blows with well-honed skill. His defense is the better for it, and Gai is proud of him. There is a thrill in sparring against each other, when Gai can open up fully against Lee, and know that Lee is opening up fully against him, both of them throwing blows at each other that would flatten weaker shinobi. But today, Lee just isn't there – his heart isn't in the complex dance of battle.

Lee drops to the ground on all fours, his chest and shoulders heaving as he pants. He clearly knows that he is performing far below par today – the embarrassment and desperate shame are clear in his eyes, his self-flagellation practically palpable in the air. He hates doing anything less than a perfect job, always drives himself to do better – and even now, when he's obviously got something eating him from inside, he's still ashamed to be putting forth such a dismal effort.

Studying Lee carefully, Gai ponders how to go about dealing with this. Normally, he is as uncompromising with Lee as Lee is with himself – it's the same way Gai was trained, to demand nothing less than perfection from himself, and he has imparted that lesson to Lee by example. However, Lee's current low level of performance clearly has a deeper-seated origin than simple disinclination toward the intense strain of training or passing muscle fatigue, and it occurs to Gai that simply demanding that Lee shape up and stop acting so weak might only not be helpful, it could be outright detrimental.

The last thing he wants is for Lee to see him as someone he can't confide in. And anymore, it's getting very hard to come at Lee with such an attitude. The need for teaching it is past, Lee has fully absorbed and clearly understands that the way to be strong is to be uncompromising with himself, to resist the body's cries for rest or leniency. And now, when Gai sees a deeply emotional turmoil brewing in Lee's wide, dark eyes, his instinct isn't to chastise – he wants nothing more than to pull Lee into his arms and soothe away that painful conflict. He knows Lee would welcome it, and he can hear Kakashi's voice in the back of his mind.

_He wants you. You want him. He's of age. Where's the problem? _

Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – the moment in which Gai finds himself teetering on the brink, torn between telling Lee firmly to get up and keep going or kneeling beside him to embrace him, ends with the arrival of Neji and Tenten for the day's training. His urge to comfort Lee in a fashion that might be considered somewhat improper vanishes, or at least lets itself hide for a while behind the mentality of "sensei" that he pulls about himself like a cloak. He assigns Lee to run agility drills with Tenten while he and Neji spar. It's an act of mercy, making that assignment – he knows Lee well enough to know that he will hate displaying today's strange bout of weakness against Neji, and Neji will not hesitate to take advantage of it. It is perhaps not the right decision to make as a teacher, but Gai wants to protect Lee's spirit. He'll give Lee the grace of today's training session to work out whatever it is that's troubling him. If this behavior persists, he will not be so lenient.

He monitors Lee carefully throughout the day's session. There is some improvement – Lee manages to pull his concentration together enough to register closer to the bottom of his usual range of performance, instead of well below it. Facing Tenten seems to help, as well as the clear knowledge that Gai is giving him a little breathing room by setting the day's tasks as he has.

But Gai begins to notice something odd. When Lee is focused on Tenten, he does better, but every time he realizes that Gai is watching him, his performance slips again and he stumbles, hesitates, or falters. Whatever it is that's troubling him, it has something to do with Gai – and it isn't the obvious crush he's been nursing for the past few years. That, Gai knows, inspires Lee to work much harder, encouraging him with the prospect of doing well and earning Gai's praise.

The training session ends when the sun touches the horizon. All four of them run through their cool-down exercises and stretches together, letting their hearts slow, their frenzied chakra patterns return to resting normal, making sure their muscles cool without stiffening. Lee is still abnormally quiet, keeping his head bowed and his gaze on the ground in front of him; Neji makes an attempt to draw him out with conversation, but Lee's replies are monosyllabic and disinterested. Now that he doesn't have the distraction of facing Tenten, he's retreated again.

White eyes turn their gaze on Gai, and there are volumes there to be read. Gai understands the message clearly. In his own way, Neji is extremely worried by Lee's abnormal behavior, and he wants Gai to fix Lee, to make him go back to normal, to find out what's making him so withdrawn and get rid of it. Lee quiet, withdrawn, and unsettled is not Lee – it's a sign of something profoundly wrong with the world.

Tenten just watches Lee quietly, her gaze concerned and sympathetic.

Not long after, Neji and Tenten leave, each of them shooting Gai a look that says _I'm leaving you alone with him. Use this time to make him start being Lee again. Please. _

Lee looks back and forth between Gai and his teammates' retreating backs. There is a new conflict in his eyes, and Gai feels the pang of affection again – the desire to take Lee in his arms and comfort him in very non-teacherly ways. Ways that he knows Lee would not reject, would even welcome eagerly, but that doesn't make the ethics of the matter any different. He should be ashamed of himself, he tells his wayward longings firmly, for entertaining such thoughts about his student, especially when Lee is so vulnerable, so desperate for guidance that has absolutely nothing to do with anything sensual. It's hard to stop his mind from conjuring up images that, while pleasant, should not have any bearing on the matter at hand.

If he doesn't do something, he realizes abruptly, Lee will get up and follow Neji and Tenten, just like that – abandoning their usual post-training time together. And once Lee has left, has walked away and gone back to his lonely little apartment at the edge of the village, it's likely that Gai will never get another chance to speak to him openly about what is troubling him. He knows – he's seen it before. The way Lee locks away the things that deeply trouble him, so he can maintain his focus. If Gai wants to help Lee, he needs to step forward now.

He lays a hand on Lee's shoulder, gently; Lee starts, then looks up at him with an expression full of bewilderment and loss. It's painful to see – Lee should never feel so uncertain, so grieved. Whatever it is, it isn't just distracting him – it's hurting him deeply.

_What's the matter, Lee? What could possibly have the power to rob your eyes of their brightness, your body of its joyful energy? What has planted this aching sorrow in your heart? How can I free you from its clutches, restore to you your brilliant spirit? Please… let me in, let me wipe that sadness from your eyes, from your body, from your heart. _ Gai's heart aches for his student, and he wishes he could let out all the words that brim on his lips, but in the face of that pain, he can't. All he can do is ask, as gently as he can – gentle is not something that comes easily to him, but for Lee, he can be as gentle as a kitten – what it is that is troubling him so.

Lee wavers for a moment, biting his lip, ducking his head and staring at the ground for a moment, then lunges forward and flings his arms around Gai's waist tightly, clinging to him. Head pressed to his mentor's shoulder, he takes a few deep, shuddering breaths, before the words tear themselves out of him.

"Gai-sensei… I… I don't want to lose you!"

Gai's arms enfold him, strong broad hands stroking Lee's back in an attempt to comfort and soothe him, and he listens with a sick mix of sorrow, horror, and guilty relief as words pour out of Lee. That first exclamation broke the dam, and now Lee can't stop talking, forehead pressed to Gai's shoulder and words being murmured into his torso – nevertheless, all too audible. Gai sorrows as he listens, because everything Lee is saying is the absolute truth, and there's nothing he can do about that. He is horrified, because he always feels sick when he is reminded of this inevitable fact of the taijutsuist life, and he's afraid of what Lee will do with the knowledge. And he feels relief mixed with intense guilt because he doesn't have to be the one to tell Lee about it. Kakashi has taken care of it – Kakashi, who is so good at detachment, who doesn't have to worry about it anyway. That painful duty has been done – even though Gai should have been the one to shoulder the responsibility.

All he has to do now is pick up the pieces.

He tightens his arms around Lee, holding him as though that simple contact will somehow make things better. His hands slide up and down Lee's back, stroking that body that is just starting to broaden with adult muscle and power. His dearest treasure, this young man. Lee, for his part, clings to Gai as though they are about to be torn from each other at any moment – desperately, with all the strength Gai has fostered in him.

"I'm sorry," Gai murmurs softly. _Sorry that you had to find out like this. Sorry that I didn't have the strength to tell you myself. Sorry that the world would doom us both to such a fate. Sorry… Sorry that I got you into this in the first place. _"I'm sorry."

And then Lee's looking up at him – his wide dark eyes are still haunted with sadness and something that just might possibly be fear, but there are other emotions there now too, a nervousness that has nothing to do with his expected lifespan or the prospect of his body failing right out from under him.

Gai meets his protégé's gaze, an electric spark of meaning making the air around them tense and still as his world condenses down to Lee –

And Lee's hand slides up from his waist, to his chest to his shoulder to his nape –

And then he leans in closer, eyes filled with trepidation but just as much determination, stretching up on his toes to close the last few inches of their height difference –

And then warm, soft lips press against Gai's mouth, awkward with youthful inexperience but all the more achingly sweet for it, tender and hopeful and real.

Lee is kissing him, and Gai could not push him away if the fate of the whole world hinged on it. Instead, his lips soften against Lee's, accepting and returning the kiss, encouraging, banishing that nervous hesitation with gentle reassurance. He's giving up the struggle against his own desires, against the temptation of Lee's maturing body and shining spirit, against Kakashi's well-meaning urging. He just can't resist anymore, not with the solid warmth of Lee's body pressed against his, with the bravely tremulous press of those sweet lips to his. This first kiss must have taken so much of Lee's courage…

Their lips draw apart, a bare few inches, and Gai murmurs, "Lee…" at the same moment as Lee asks, "Gai-sensei…?"

Gai knows he has a choice. He could pull back, could say no, could tell Lee to go home, to seek romance among those his own age – among those he won't have to fear losing so soon. He _could. _But the truth is, he can't. There is no way he can push Lee away now. He cups a hand against Lee's cheek, stroking the pad of his thumb against the elegant arch of a cheekbone, and kisses him again, firm and sweet, and Lee's arms wrap tightly around his neck. In that moment, time stops, and nothing exists but the two of them.


	7. The Altar of Youth

A/N: You all will not BELIEVE the amount of writerly angst that has gone into this chapter! Originally, chapters 6, 7 and 8 were planned to all be one chapter, but then I started chapter 6 and realized that if I had one chapter cover all of this, it would be WAY too long and take everything way too fast. And now, even broken down, these two chapters are the longest in the entire fic, by a LOT! We'll see if ch. 8 follows the same mold or if it goes back to the 1200-1800 word length that was the norm before all this got started.

This chapter has been a great deal of trouble. I've completely restarted it three times, pondered breaking it down into two chapters because I couldn't decide on POV, filled my rough draft with scribbles and crossouts and illegible marginal notes, and angsted endlessly over just how explicit I should get. (I don't want to bump it up to an M rating). My original goal was to get it posted before I went off to Nekocon, but that fell through miserably. BUT here it is, and hopefully the next few chapters will be easier. Enjoy! And as always, comments and concrit are more than welcome!

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They kiss for a long time, sweet and tender and tinged just a little with uncertainty – but as they continue, that uncertainty lessens, as Lee figures out what he's doing and as Gai releases his worry about consequences and propriety. Lee has always been very attentive to Gai, and while he can't quite be called a quick study, he devotes himself a hundred percent to everything he does, including this.

When their lips first meet, the sun is setting; the next time Gai has enough attention to spare to notice their surroundings, it is fully dark, and they are surrounded by the musical calls of crickets and frogs, singing the nighttime symphony of the forest. Fireflies dance around them, little points of light rising out of the grass and circling in the search for a mate. The air is cool, the warning edge of the winter that is still weeks away. But Lee… Lee is very warm, pressed against Gai. No chill can touch them.

They pull back, hesitating a little, each looking to the other. Lee is nervous and shy – so very sweetly so, and Gai feels an intense pressure to do this right. If hurts his precious student, he will never forgive himself.

There are no words between them, and no words are necessary; they understand each other well, and the silence between them is warm, though tinged bittersweet with Lee's desperation and Gai's sad acknowledgement. A kiss, even if it is the most beautiful, pure, hoped-for, longed-for kiss in the world, cannot erase the facts – and the facts in this case are not happy ones. But it can soften them, and now, it does more than that – it offers them hope, an uplifting promise. The future cannot be changed, but the present can be enjoyed. The desperate sadness that was before visible in Lee's eyes has now been nearly overwhelmed with glowing happiness, and Gai knows that his own expression is now less melancholic and far more tender and caring.

Gai's normal verbosity has deserted him completely; it's as though his mouth knows there are far better things it should be doing right now, and has simply cut off the flow of words in order to enable those better things to happen. So who is he to deny its wisdom? He kisses Lee again, feeling his student's arms lock around his neck and hold onto him tightly.

Eventually, though, they do have to leave. It is cold out, damp, dark, and Gai thinks this would really be better continued indoors. He draws away from Lee, just enough to look into those dark eyes; the two of them are bathed in moonlight, and he can see the trust and hope shining in Lee's gaze. Innocence. He feels a twinge of guilt. As beautiful as love is, and as joyful as the physical expression of that love can be, there is something about the childlike innocence in Lee's being that he feels he will irrevocably shatter if he pursues this.

But then Lee's fingers brush over his face lightly, tracing his lips, and he feels a renewed surge of desire, his guilt washing away.

"Lee," he says quietly. "Let's go in." Simple words – in a way, he thinks with absent amusement, they're Kakashi-words, simple on the surface but filled with depths of unspoken meaning.

Lee and Gai do not live anywhere close to one another, rather to mutual regret. Like many single jounin, Gai lives in a large apartment complex near the center of the village, close to the Hokage's offices. It is easy for them to be summoned on a moment's notice, and as more and more jounin have come to the same building, the proprietor has gotten more and more skilled at recognizing and catering to the needs and quirks of high-level shinobi. By contrast, Lee lives near the edge of the village; he was a genin when he began living on his own, and his tiny one-room apartment reflects the economy of the genin stipend.

Typically, when they are returning from the training areas, they part ways almost as soon as they enter the residential area of the village; there is a particular corner that has become their 'goodnight corner,' the place where their paths divide every evening.

Now, they pause there, uncertainty again rising in them. This is the moment of decision – will they spend the night together, taking things further quickly? Or will they relax, take a slower pace, gradually explore their changing and deepening relationship?

Gai remembers his sensei's words from long ago – longer ago than he cares to remember. _We are men of action, Gai – it does not suit you to hold back and wait. Remember this. _

_I don't know if this is quite the situation you were thinking of, sensei, _he thinks to himself, to the man's memory. _But I have never yet forgotten your lessons, for good or for ill. _He smiles at Lee, strokes that silken black hair, and instead of turning toward the center of town, he lets his footsteps turn, and together they walk toward Lee's small apartment. Gai wants to tell himself that it's because he thinks Lee will be more comfortable in his own home, but the truth is – well, the truth is that, partially, but it is also Gai does not yet want to bring Lee into his apartment. It's too private a place, still – his refuge against the world. It bears witness of all the ways Gai has failed in his ideals, all the times he has been less sure and less strong than he needs to be.

He doesn't want Lee to see the location of that weak side of him.

Lee's smile is brilliant in the darkness; whether or not he understands the reason for Gai's choice or not, he's happy, and that settles Gai's uncertainty, at least for the moment. For the first few minutes, they walk in silence; Gai can feel the conflict between the budding eagerness of the evening and the heavy topic that prompted those first kisses. Finally, he manages to find a topic of conversation that at least on the surface does not invoke kissing, painfully dismal training sessions, or the taijutsuist mortality rate, and they fall into an easy conversation. The happiness of finally having given in and shared those beautiful, sweet kisses with Lee cannot completely overshadow the thought of those painful, dark revelations, and Gai wants to drive them out of his mind as soon as possible. He feels too old whenever those insidious little facts present themselves to him.

_While you live, live, _his sensei's voice echoes in his mind. _Your death can take care of itself. _

Sensei had been a wise man. Gai still misses him deeply.

Instead, they talk about the seasons. The mild Konoha autumns are beautiful; if it were daylight, they would be enjoying a riotous symphony of fiery golds, vivid oranges, and deep molten reds as they walk toward Lee's apartment. The buildings of the Hidden Leaf are bright-painted, but during the autumn, they appear almost drab compared to the natural splendor that cradles the village. Gai personally prefers spring over autumn, for a variety of reasons that range from the symbolic to the simply practical, but Lee is divided between the two, and as they walk, he speaks with an almost poetic lyricism about autumn's beauty in contrast with spring's.

And then they reach Lee's apartment. There is a slight moment of awkwardness as Lee invites Gai in with an almost formal air. This is uncharted territory for them – something new and fragile and a little strange, and Lee has always taken refuge in politeness. It's something Gai appreciates about him. He accepts the invitation, and then they're inside.

It is small – tiny, really. The entire apartment is barely the size of Gai's bedroom, and it manages to encompass everything Lee could need with a neat economy of space that is highly impressive. There doesn't seem to be a speck of dust anywhere, and Gai wonders offhand how Lee has the energy to keep it clean – with the training regimen he keeps, he should be collapsing into bed exhausted at the end of the day. Apparently, he finds time and energy to clean.

His eyes fix on the bed in the corner of the room, and all in a rush, the mental image of laying a naked, aroused Lee down on that bed and making love to him fills his mind. It's a thought that tantalizes and excites him, and he tries to rein in his libido before his body betrays him. It's hard – now that they're here, now that he knows that they most likely will have sex. It's still no reason to lose control of himself.

Lee lays a hand on Gai's chest, sliding it under the habitually unzipped flak vest. The touch is warm, coming through thin cloth and bandages; Gai raises his own hand to cover Lee's, clasping it gently, then rests his other hand on Lee's waist and draws him close for a tender kiss. Lee's response is eager – still unpracticed, still a little uncertain on technique, but he compensates with enthusiasm and sheer, single-minded devotion, and Gai finds it far more exciting than any more experienced clinch he's ever enjoyed.

Perhaps it is time to take things further…

Lee eagerly welcomes Gai's tongue into his mouth, sucking on it with a soft whimper of pleasure. The sound, and the soft vibration of it, seems to shoot through Gai's body, making him shiver. _Oh, Lee… my beautiful Lee… the things you do to me, the things you make me feel… You are my treasure. _He's concerned that they're moving far too fast, but in the face of Lee's eagerness, how can he hold back? How can he deny Lee when he has never denied him anything before? He feels he cannot – and he doesn't want to. His conscience is trying to sting him, but it is being rapidly drowned out by long-repressed desire bursting free.

They touch each other with greater and greater desperation, strong hands moving over strong bodies, lips and tongues interplaying in a series of ever-deeper, ever-sweeter kisses. Gai catches Lee's hands in his, unwinding the bandages with careful attention and letting them fall to the floor. Lee's hands are liberally scarred; Gai smoothes kisses over those scars with tender care, and Lee blushes, watching him through shyly eager eyes. Then they draw close again, Gai's hands settling at Lee's waist as Lee's now-bare hands trace up his arms, fingertips exploring the contours of his biceps before moving to his chest, sliding under the vest to explore Gai's torso.

Every touch sends desire soaring higher. The thin green cloth they both wear does little to deaden the feeling of touch – they can both feel each other's warmth keenly through their clothes, and it's tantalizing, encouraging, makes them desire even more to know what it would be like to touch bare skin instead.

Gai unzips Lee's vest, starting to push it off Lee's shoulders – Lee gives a quick, sinuous twist, and it falls to the floor with a muffled _thump,_and then he reaches up to do the same to Gai's, and it's two identical vests on the floor now. Heavy cloth out of the way, Gai draws Lee to press against him, and he kisses him again, hard and passionate. There is no holding back now. His conscience has been locked in a tiny corner of his mind, where it can't trouble him.

With Lee's vocal encouragement, Gai caresses him – how many times has he touched Lee before? A hand on the shoulder, on the back, liberal blows landing during spars, guidance as he learns new katas. Every day for the past four years, Gai has laid hands on his student in some way. And yet, it feels like the first time. He can clearly feel the growing amount of adult muscle Lee is putting on – gone is the angular, skinny youth that Gai first took under his wing those years ago. In his place stands a powerful, increasingly muscular, and above all highly desirable young man. One who is offering himself freely and eagerly to Gai.

It would take a stronger man than him to refuse.

They move toward the bed together, hands roaming, lips meeting and caressing and parting to murmur sweet endearments. Gai mouths Lee's throat, feeling that strong pulse against his lips, and coaxing a heated moan from Lee as teeth scrape against skin. Hands pull at green fabric, demanding and eager.

As they reach the bed, Gai pauses, touching Lee's cheek gently.

"Lee," he murmurs, his voice husky with desire but tender.

"Gai-sensei?" Does it feel strange, to be addressed with that respectful honorific while they are in a situation of such intimacy, about to make love? Gai thinks perhaps it should, but it doesn't. That name defines who he is, now. _Ever since I met you, my way of the ninja became teaching you to be a great shinobi. _ 'Gai-sensei' is who he is now, Lee's sensei – he has made Lee the center and focus of his universe. To be addressed as anything else would feel strange.

"Listen to me. If anything I do doesn't make you feel good – if it hurts or makes you uncomfortable, tell me. I'll stop." Gai puts especial emphasis on this. It's the polar opposite of everything he's ever taught Lee before, the diametric opposition to the training philosophy they both carry engrained in their hearts, but this is not training. Gai will not abuse Lee's trust or his body.

Lee's eyes widen at Gai's words, but he nods, leaning forward to lay his cheek against Gai's shoulder. "Thank you," he murmurs, his tone revealing that no matter how eager he is, he's also nervous. The reassurance clearly helps. Gai kisses him again, deeply, as though to seal the promise.

Then their hands are roaming again, fiercer and more eager than before, stripping away clothing from heated flesh, caressing bare skin, finding all the most sensitive spots and all the best ways to coax forth moans and sighs from each other. Lee is inexperienced but eager to learn; Gai is tender and careful, showing Lee by example just how and where to touch to build the flame of desire into a roaring inferno.

He guides Lee to sit on the edge of the bed, kneeling in front of him to remove his legwarmers and weights with an almost reverent touch. Lee's body deserves worship; it is the perfection of physical form, an idol to the power and beauty of youth – Gai has trained that idol, and now he kneels before it in adulation.

When Lee is fully bared, Gai begins kissing his skin tenderly, still kneeling in front of him. It feels as though he can never get enough, never touch enough – Lee is so precious to him, and he wants to make sure his dear student knows it, understands fully how much he is cherished. Lee's moans grow feverish as Gai lavishes attention on him, wanting to do everything he can to make him feel good. He adores Lee, and pours his adoration into every touch and motion as he kneels – in worship, he thinks to himself, a little foggy with lust. Worshipping at the altar of beautiful youth. Any way he can bring pleasure to Lee, he will.

And he does. Together, they set out to climb the heights of pleasure. Gai has taught Lee to know his body in one way, as a tool and a weapon to be trained, and how, he teaches Lee to know his body as an instrument from which melodies of pleasure can be coaxed forth. There is the joy that comes from hard work, from training and gaining new power, and there is the joy that comes from two people joining as lovers; Lee opens himself up to this new learning as well as he does to everything else Gai teaches him, reaching out – nervous, eager, and above all, trusting.

Their bodies meld together with delicious slowness, every touch and taste savored to its utmost. The little gasp from Lee as Gai starts to fill him is music, the slight tremble of his trained body and the arch of his throat as he lets his head fall back are the image of pure lust. If Desire could take human form, Gai thinks hazily, it would look like this.

For Lee's sake, he does his utmost to be gentle. It's hard, when years of celibacy, months of repressed desires, and the intensity of pleasure are all urging him forward, urging him to let loose his control and take as much as he can get. But this is Lee's first time, and Gai is determined that it will be good. He will not hurt Lee, he will not let himself take what should be an act of love and beauty, and turn it ugly or painful.

As they move in tandem, Lee's strong hands clutching at Gai's body and Gai moving deep within him, they both cry out their pleasure in an unabashed symphony of moans, gasps, incoherent pleas and breathless praise. Gai is no virgin, but none of his precious experiences have held even a whit of this intense sweetness. Lee is so open, so unashamed, so unrestrained as he arches, begs, cries out ardently for more. It's all too much – too overwhelming, too magical, too perfect. Deep in his heart, it almost hurts, the beauty of it.

Afterward, Gai lies beside Lee, the two of them panting softly and savoring the sweet aftershocks of pleasure that follow lovemaking. Lee curls against him, and Gai watches his student slowly drift toward sleep, wearing an expression of such happy trust it makes his heart ache.

Asleep, Lee looks so very young.

Gai is wide awake – he doesn't think he could sleep at all tonight, not with the enormity of what just happened confronting him. It keeps repeating, each time with a different feeling behind it. At first, it's happy. He's finally broken down his barriers, his repressed emotions – he has found this joy and sweetness, this happiness, with the precious young man who has come to define his life. But gradually, as his lust cools and his conscience comes back out of its corner, he starts to slip into self-accusation. The moonlight crawls across the floor toward the bed as Gai starts to think about Lee's innocence, his age – the trusted role a teacher ought to take, and he starts to wonder if he has done the right thing.

By the time the moonlight touches the edge of the bed, he's almost certain he hasn't. Why did he give in? Childhood is a precious, brief thing for shinobi – why did he rip away those final shreds of Lee's? That beautiful innocence that he destroyed can never be regained, now that it has been broken. Why did he give in to his own lusts? He is Lee's teacher, the one responsible for him – and despite all of Kakashi's reassurances, despite the defiant little corner of his own mind that reminds him of just how good it felt and how Lee welcomed him so eagerly, Gai can't help the guilt that closes about him like a vise.

_I stole his innocence._

_I used his respect toward me in a shameful manner._

_I abused his trust, and my position as his sensei. _

_I… have I ruined everything? _

It's overwhelming, stifling – Gai can't take it anymore. Carefully, slowly, he disentangles himself from his sleeping student and dresses in the darkness of the tiny, painfully neat apartment. Their clothes are so similar – he has to gauge by size which are his and which are Lee's. He can't stay, not when the vulnerable curl of Lee's naked body and the smell of sex permeating the room conspire with his conscience to accuse him so relentlessly.

In the moment before he leaves, he pauses, looking over his shoulder at Lee, studying him with quiet intensity. For a moment, a rebellious thought slips through his mind. _He's so beautiful… _ It brings with it an intense desire to turn back into the room, strip his clothes off again, and settle himself in those inviting arms. But he quashes those thoughts, those desires. No matter how much it hurts, he's determined to do the right thing, and he feels certain – _no, you idiot! _ a mental voice screams in the back of his mind. _This is all wrong! _ -- he feels certain this is the right path to take.

With a soft sigh, he leaves Lee sleeping alone in a pool of moonlight.


	8. A New and Different Thing

A/N: I hate this chapter. I just completely hate it. But I couldn't skip over it -- it's important! Hopefully, it won't put any of you off the story altogether.

* * *

Lee wakes late, to the sun shining brightly in his eyes. It's strange. Usually he's up at dawn, but for the sun to be coming through his window and reaching his face, it can't be earlier than midmorning. He's slept in.

For the first moment of wakefulness, he's only aware of the brightness of the sun, and the strangeness of it – then everything comes flooding back. The intense turbulence of the previous day smashes over him like the felling of a great tree, shattering his drowsy haze. A little thing like the sun in his eyes can't bother him, the thought of having slept in can't trouble him, when there are three great enormities hovering over his head.

_We had sex. _Such cold, emotionless words. That's not how he wants to think about it, so he tries again. _We made love. Gai-sensei made love to me._His cheeks flush as the vivid memories replay themselves over and over in his mind. Gai's touch, Gai's strong hands and soft lips and Gai's hard, beautiful body, all muscle and sinew and intoxicating, wonderful strength. Everything he could ever have dreamed of, and so much more. So intense, so real. Lee can only hope – probably futilely – that he will ever grow into the sort of power and grace that Gai carries so naturally.

His mind traces him backward from there – back to the memory of that first nervous kiss, and what came before it. That training session – such utter failure. He should be humiliated by it. He hasn't performed so poorly since he was a child – perhaps not even then! Shame curls his tongue, sours the wonderful memory of Gai's hands on his bare skin. And the reason he performed so poorly…

_The taijutsuist's life expectancy is about fifteen years shorter than any other shinobi's._Kakashi's voice in his head, always so cool, so unruffled. Gai seems to find it almost amusing, the way he always works to provoke more of those so-calm reactions. Lee thinks it's utterly hideous. _Less, sometimes. A fifty-year-old can stand back and throw a ninjutsu or a genjutsu as well as he did at half that age, but how well do you think that fifty-year-old can throw a punch? You've got less than a ten percent chance of making it through your thirties. _How can he say such ugly things so calmly? _And Gai… much the same. _

Lee's thoughts circle around to Gai again. The training session, he can push out of his mind. It was horrible, it was pure embarrassment, it was hideous, but it was a training session. He will work twice as hard – three times as hard! – at the next one, and that will be that. He will improve. But the rest of it…

_Gai-sensei made love to me._

…_I fell asleep in his arms._

_Why isn't he here?_

He is so accustomed to waking up alone, and has such ugly realizations waiting for him, that he is several minutes in the processing of them before it occurs to him that, having fallen asleep with Gai at his side, then really, shouldn't he be waking up to see him there?

Apparently not.

But for the mess of his clothes lying on the floor – his own only, but forming a trail from halfway across the apartment to the bed in a way he has never left them – and a thick, musky odor clinging to the bed, last night could have been a dream. The bed is far more rumpled than usual, and while Lee has never experienced that odor before, he instinctively understands what it is.

It's too bad it's so unpleasant. He wishes he could have some physical memory of their coupling, something beyond the images and impressions captured in his mind.

And then he actually sits up, and realizes that there are a whole set of physical memories there. He's been sore quite often from training, but _this_soreness is nothing he's ever felt before. Far more intimate, far more… ah… localized, and something that he thinks really could only have come from what they did.

From Gai's body, moving over and within his.

The memory brings a prickle of heat to his cheeks, and a tight feeling in his belly. Arousal. It's a whole different thing, now – his body. Moving slowly, he sits up – wince – swings his legs around, stands – wince again. He's naked. Of course he's naked – he had sex last night.

His first time, with Gai, just as he's wished for.

Why isn't Gai here now?

He picks up his clothes, tosses the jumpsuit and his underwear into the laundry basket, lays the legwarmers, weights, vest and bandages on his bed, waiting for him. Then he goes into the bathroom to shower.

In front of the mirror, he looks at himself. There are bruises on his body – heavy ones, spreading dark on his limbs and torso, shapeless blobs. Those are from training. Gai doesn't pull his blows when training with Lee, because Lee's defense must be trained to handle full-strength hits. Or, as yesterday, Lee must simply absorb the blows and keep going.

There are lighter marks scattered with the darker, though. Small. They are finger-shaped, marking his hips and sides. There is nothing they do in training that can cause those. Lee blushes as he realizes that those are not marks of training. Those are marks of Gai's hands on him, Gai's ardor making him unleash a little of that great strength.

He flushes, crimson flooding his face and throat at the memory. So many memories… so precious. He can't look at his body the same way, anymore. It's become a new thing to him, made new and a little strange, a little different, by Gai's touch.

_Why isn't he here?_

The thought sneaks in again, his traitorous mind bringing up realities he wants to forget. _He was with me. Maybe he just… had an early mission or something. I slept in… _The thought rings hollow; Lee's capability at self-deception only extends so far. Not far enough for this.

_He left me. He slipped out in the night and left me alone._

_Did I do something wrong?_

_What was it?_

In the mirror, he studies himself. At sixteen, he's still growing, still angular, his limbs and body elongating faster than he can build muscle to support them, even with how much he trains. He's lean, though, not skinny – that's a small mercy. There's some muscle there, even if it's less than he'd like. But is he unappealing to Gai? Is his body simply not good enough? There are scars – many scars, for his age. He's better at absorbing blows than dodging them. _Marks of when I haven't been good enough. Once… _it_ was over, did Gai-sensei look at these and find me unworthy because of them?_

_Or is it that I'm simply not good enough? _That is the familiar refrain of Lee's life. He has never heard it from Gai before, has heard in fact constant repetitions of the opposite, that Lee is good enough for anything he sets his mind to, but when everyone else tells him the opposite, sometimes it's hard to believe that Gai doesn't at least let those thoughts cross his mind sometimes.

Gai is everything Lee wishes he could be. So many things he's afraid he'll never reach.

A new thought flows into his mind like water, the same thought he has tried to banish before. Has been trying to forget ever since he spoke with Kakashi. _Gai-sensei is slightly more than ten years older than I am. I don't know how much… But it means he's at least twenty-six. Maybe older. Will I lose him in a few short years?_

_Thirty. The danger starts at thirty._

_Is my life already more than half over? _

The thoughts are troubling. It's almost easier to think about why Gai has left him alone. Less painful. Less inevitable.

He swallows hard, looks for a new mental tack, but he can't seem to find one. His thoughts are circling, bouncing back and forth between the giddy elation of having been with Gai and the sickening dread of having been abandoned by Gai afterward. Training… what will training be like, later in the day? He doesn't know if he will even be able to face his sensei, with everything that has happened. Knowing that somehow, in some way he doesn't even understand yet, he has failed Gai – why else has he woken up alone?

In Lee's world, Gai can do no wrong. Thus, whatever reason has driven Gai to leave in the middle of the night, Lee feels that it is a failing on his part. Failing to live up to Gai's expectations, failing to adequately please his precious mentor.

_What did I do wrong, Gai-sensei? Is it something you can forgive me for? Will I ever have another chance? _He doesn't know. _It was wonderful for me… but was I so selfish in taking my own pleasure that I didn't please you? _He worries that might be the case. After all – he doesn't know what to do! Doesn't know how to make someone feel good. Perhaps that is the problem.

He bites his lip, steps into the shower, and washes his body. Washes away Gai's seed, dry and crumbling on his thighs and buttocks, but he cannot wash away the memory of the pleasure.

_Whatever it is, I will do better. I swear it, Gai-sensei! Just give me another chance… please… _


	9. Under the Mask

A/N: Sorry it's taken me so long to get this chapter out! I had finals and final papers, and while Genius of Masks is _much _more fun to write than an analysis of American Civil Religion (damn my theology major!), the analysis will get me good grades, and this won't. However, it's glorious glorious vacation now, and the next chapter's here and ready!

* * *

After Iruka falls asleep, curled up contentedly beside him, Kakashi stares at the ceiling. He isn't restless, precisely; he's just not ready for sleep yet, and he has a few things he wants to think over before he surrenders to dreams.

For one thing, he's rather proud of himself for the day's events. It has taken rather a lot of work and more meddling than is usually worth it, but Gai and Lee seem to have gotten themselves figured out, if those kisses on the training field meant anything. _Don't think Gai could have gotten cold feet, _he muses to himself. _With the way he acts… and the way Lee acts… ha. As if the kid would _let _him get cold feet. _The mental image of Gai trying to back out of things, and Lee cheerfully taking the kisses as a 'please molest me' signal, amuses Kakashi, and he chuckles softly to himself in the darkness.

Iruka mumbles in his sleep and presses closer to Kakashi. He's been working hard recently, and it shows in the slight dark circles under his eyes, in how quickly he's been falling asleep at night. The new school year is well underway, and it's a particularly large class this time – Iruka is paying the price of the village's blossoming population. Fortunately, the weekend is coming up; Kakashi looks forward to having a couple uninterrupted days to relax, and help his lover relax. A lazy few days together, no upcoming missions for Kakashi and two days child-free for Iruka. It will be fun.

He isn't certain how long he drowses in the darkness, not quite at the point of falling asleep but far too sated and comfortable to move. With Iruka cuddled up to him, he's warm and disinclined to do much of anything. It's a couple hours, maybe a little more – he's not keeping track, doesn't really care – that he floats, half-asleep and listening to Iruka's soft mumbles of sleep-talk, watching the moonlight trace its way across the room.

By his guess, it's probably around two in the morning when there's a rattle from the window; at first, all he does is rise out of his drowsy state, not bothering to try and figure out the source of the noise. Then a second rattle – pebbles. Someone is throwing pebbles at his apartment window. Who could that be? There's a pause, the thrower stooping to gather more, and then a third rattle.

If this keeps up, it will wake Iruka, and Kakashi doesn't want that – the poor schoolteacher needs all the sleep he can get. So he carefully disentangles their limbs and slides out of bed. A quick detour to grab a mask, and he gets his face covered before opening the window and looking out.

Gai is standing in the street below, another fistful of pebbles cocked and ready to throw. His expression is dark and haggard – the mask is down, his emotions sharp and almost painfully bare on his face – and Kakashi has a foreboding realization. _Something must have gone wrong. _

The green-clad jounin drops the pebbles, seeing Kakashi, and points off to the north. Understanding the gesture, Kakashi nods, and Gai turns, jogging off in the direction he pointed.

The silver-haired jounin closes the window, troubled. If Gai is initiating mask-down time now, when he should be sleeping off a very satisfying encounter with Lee – or perhaps still going at it, taijutsuist stamina being what it is – then whatever's happening, it's probably fairly serious. _What could have happened? Was _Lee _the one who panicked at the last minute? _That seemed almost impossible to imagine, with the kid's intensity and refusal to back down from anything.

He needs to go find out. It only takes him a minute to dress, and he pauses to leave a note for Iruka. His lover gets up early to prepare for the school day, and this could take hours. A few simple words suffice. _Something's come up. Don't worry – not a mission. I'll be home later today. _He signs it with a henohenomoheji and tucks the little scrap of paper into Iruka's hand. With that taken care of, it's time to go – better not to leave Gai alone too long, in this state.

There is a place near the edge of the village – an old treehouse, its original occupants long since grown to adulthood and possibly deceased. Kakashi has been using it as a refuge since childhood, and Gai has known about it since the early days of their friendship. It has become the preferred location for Gai's mask-down times because of its privacy and relative isolation, letting him indulge in expressions of emotion that are very much contrary to the public persona he's carefully developed. Only Kakashi is privileged to see the guilts and fears that lurk underneath.

Moving quickly, it takes Kakashi about ten minutes to get there. When he steps into the one-room structure nestled high in the branches of an enormous oak, he finds Gai sitting crosslegged, staring at the wall with a fixed, unreadable expression, the darkness rendering him a figure of shadows.

A moment of sifting through his extensive memory, and the master of a thousand jutsu recalls a simple one for light; a moment, and a warm yellow glow fills the treehouse, showing Gai's face set in lines of guilt, self-directed anger, and worry. This is not good. What's happened after those kisses?

Gai doesn't react immediately to his presence, although there's no doubt he knows exactly where Kakashi is standing right now. No matter what he pretends, he is a jounin of Konoha, with the situational awareness necessary to survive in that rank.

After nearly five minutes, Gai finally speaks. "I think I would like to hit you." His voice is flat, angry.

That is, needless to say, a rather unusual start to mask-down time, one that Kakashi rather wants to know the reason for. Normally, when Gai asks for this form of release, he's depressed or worried, not angry.

Without needing to be prompted, Gai elaborates on that startling statement. His words are practically dripping with heated accusation as he speaks, accusation aimed at the person he's been closest to for nearly a decade. It's a hard thing to understand, why this sudden fury has overtaken him. At least, at first it is. Gai's words begin as an impassioned rant, not necessarily fully coherent logically. Pure emotion, the sort of thing he has kept bottled up until now, because it is anger, judgment, accusation, something that could easily develop into a grudge, and the Maito Gai that Konoha knows doesn't deal in any of these things. He is Kakashi's self-declared rival, but Kakashi is a rival that he praises. He doesn't speak of Kakashi as a terrible human being. It's a display of temper like even Kakashi has never seen from him before.

It all boils down to one simple thing. In Gai's view, Kakashi has no right to ruin Lee's mental state by informing him of the taijutsuist life expectancy. He is not Lee's mentor, he obviously doesn't know him well enough to explain things in the proper manner, and Lee's incredible loss of spirit and focus is all due to Kakashi's interference.

It's a very revealing tirade, as out of character as it is. Gai is protective of Lee's emotions in a way he can't be of Lee's physical safety, and this particular topic digs hard at his own neuroses. Kakashi takes these things into account and doesn't respond with anger or defensiveness; instead, he waits until Gai has clearly exhausted his words on the subject. Guilt underlines everything he says, and Kakashi reads underneath to find a very different message than Gai is trying to convey.

_I'm angry with you for doing what I could not. I'm angry with myself for not being able to do my duty by Lee. I'm angry with life for passing this sentence on both of us – on everyone who tries to follow this path!_ This is what Kakashi hears, and this – not Gai's actual words – is what he intends to respond to.

His answers are simple, and he lays them out without elaboration; his direct, compassionate but calm statements contrast Gai's verbose passion. Lee deserved to know, and it was clear that Gai couldn't bear to tell him – it's easier for someone with no personal involvement to deliver bad news. It's clear to him that for Gai to discuss such a thing at length would be very hard. Lee understands – now, at least – that he has to live every day to the fullest, enjoy everything, carry through with his hopes and ambitions sooner rather than later. He's a tough kid – yes, it's natural that he'd spend a little time being thrown off by it, having to readjust his worldview – and Kakashi is certain that he will bounce back, will regain his focus and probably have even more drive than before. It will take more than a little bad news to stop him; he'll be fine.

And he reminds Gai that life is what it is; Gai has told him, and he reminds Gai now, of the motto passed down from Gai's sensei. _Don't worry about dying; it will come when it comes, with no help from you. Focus on living your life. _

Although Kakashi rather expects Gai to quibble over his points, to argue with him, to reject the things he's saying, nothing of the sort happens; the taijutsuist remains silent, listening with a sort of grave, hard focus. The look on his face is unpleasant, filled with frustration and anger.

As long as Gai is silent, though, Kakashi just keeps going, trying to talk him through his anger. From what he read into Gai's statements before, Gai's not really reacting to the things he thinks he's reacting to, and that makes it easier for Kakashi to manage. The neurosis Gai carries around regarding age is easier to talk into the back of his mind than his feelings for Lee, since it's something Gai doesn't really like talking about anyway.

Lee, despite the near-death experiences he's faced on many occasions already, is still young enough to think he's immortal – still young enough to be convinced that while he can be hurt in battle, he'll never suffer the depredations of age, never wake up to a morning when his body simply will not do what he asks it to. Kakashi still hopes some of that will rub off on Gai.

In the middle of a word, Gai interrupts Kakashi with a sharp, heavy tone.

"I had sex with him."

When the mask is on, Gai speaks completely differently than when the mask is down. Sometimes, Kakashi wonders which one is more true, which one is really the mask – the short, sharp phrase sounds uncomfortable in Gai's mouth, as though he wanted to say it differently. But it's how he speaks during mask-down time.

"Good." The silver-haired jounin offers approval. "It's about time."

Clearly, Gai is not particularly surprised by this response. However, expecting it doesn't mean he's happy about it. He shoots Kakashi a dark look. "I had sex with Lee while he was upset and confused – thanks to you! – and not thinking clearly. Still good?"

Well, okay, Kakashi has to concede that maybe Gai has a bit of a point there. That's maybe not the best time to introduce a virgin to the joys of sex. But it doesn't strike him as anything near the crisis that Gai seems to think it is. _It's not as though Lee would have rejected him if he'd been thinking clearly. Hell, maybe he'd have been even more enthusiastic. _"Not as bad as you seem to think."

And Gai explodes. A long, angry torrent of guilt, self-condemnation, and disgust bursts from his lips; again, Kakashi reads beneath to find an entirely different message, one whose truth Gai is probably only half-aware of.

_I love Lee, _that message says. _I love him and I want to protect his emotions – his trust, his innocence – the way I can't protect him physically. He's suffered enough already – I don't want to put him through anything else. Even if it means protect him from myself, from my own desires and his. _It's really rather sweet, though misguided, and Kakashi feels the beginnings of a headache. He could be in bed with Iruka right now, asleep, instead of talking Gai through this for the millionth time.

"So you slept with him," he finally cuts Gai off. "What are you doing out here, then?" The question stops Gai, renders him completely silent for a long moment – the look in his eyes is equal parts deer in the headlights and bracing himself.

Silence.

"…I left after he fell asleep." The admission is quiet, rather guilty – Gai clearly knows it was a stupid thing to do.

For a long moment, Kakashi searches for words. His initial impulse – to shout and possibly throw things – isn't the best response, and his second impulse – to tell Gai in no uncertain terms to get himself _back_to Lee as soon as possible and hope the kid hasn't already woken up to find him gone – isn't much better.

"So he was emotionally distraught, you fucked him," Gai flinches at the harsh, deliberate word, "and then snuck out while he was asleep. Because, of course, the kid who thinks you're God isn't going to read any rejection into _that." _Gai looks like he wants to protest, but Kakashi doesn't give him the time. There are so many reasons why that's painfully stupid, and he relentlessly dissects every one. His friend looks like he's about to break by the end of it.

"Of course," Kakashi's tone is suddenly mild, almost soothing, "there's a very easy way to fix this." His sudden switch catches Gai off guard, and Kakashi admits to himself that he does feel a little bit bad about going the tough-love route. Obviously Gai already feels bad about this, and mask-down time is usually for comfort, not accusations. But this needs to get fully through Gai's head, and he really can be intentionally thick about some things.

Fixing this will all be rather simple, Kakashi explains, rather ironically thanks to Lee's deep devotion to his sensei. If Gai goes back and gives Lee more of the attention he craves, Kakashi has a feeling that any ruffled feathers from this little slip will be remedied within moments. And then Gai can settle down to figuring out how to get rid of his entirely misguided sense of guilt, which Kakashi's pretty certain will happen easily enough. He honestly doesn't see why Gai is so concerned about being intimate with Lee.

Explaining this over and over to Gai, in all the different ways he needs to hear it in order to be convinced, takes them well past sunrise. _Good thing I left that note for Iruka, _Kakashi thinks to himself. He's tired, starting to get decidedly cranky, and more than ready to head back to his apartment and hopefully at least catch Iruka for a few minutes; when Gai finally seems more or less convinced, he hops down out of the tree, and together, they leave the little refuge.

A messenger finds them a few minutes later, as they're on the way to the apartment complex where they both live. "Maito Gai," she says briskly. "Hokage-sama wants to see you right away." And then she's gone, hurrying about her other morning errands.

If it's something that's taken such immediate priority that Tsunade's sending for people early in the morning, then it's something Gai can't delay his response on. Kakashi shrugs and glances at Gai. "Go on. But stop by and talk to Lee before you leave the village."

As he watches his friend head off toward Tsunade's office, he just hopes – for both Gai's sake and Lee's – that he's gotten through.


	10. Priorities

One of the rock-solid, unassailable, unalterable facts of being a shinobi is that missions happen. They come when you aren't ready for them, they come when you'd really rather spend a lazy day doing nothing, they come when you feel like you're about to break from the stress of it all, and no one really gives a damn about emotional upheavals or complicated relationship problems when there's a mission to be taken. Gai, as an experienced veteran, knows this well. Kakashi has convinced him to talk to Lee, to straighten things out and make sure he hasn't hurt that precious young man, but the mission he's just been handed comes first, always. Lee will have to wait for him to get back.

It could wind up being a long mission, though, so he slips a note under Lee's door before he leaves.

_Lee- _

_I have to leave the village for a mission. It is estimated to last two to three weeks, but the worry-date is a month and a half. _

The worry date is essentially how long you have to go without any communication before you're declared MIA – or, if the situation warrants, an investigation is sent. Gai doesn't expect this mission to take nearly that long. The duration is the only thing he can openly discuss, though. It may only be A-rank through charity and some bureaucratic shuffling, but A-rank is A-rank, and classified means classified.

_I am sorry for the way things turned out – for hurting you, my precious person. I hope you can forgive me for that. When I return, a serious discussion will be in store for us, I think. There is much that needs to be said. _

Much indeed – some of it will be pleasant, and some will not, Gai thinks to himself. But there is one thing he knows for certain – he cannot turn Lee away any longer. The damage he may have done is done, and the decision for him now is whether he will hurt Lee further – hurt them both, really, because it pains him deeply as well – by pulling back, or whether he will follow up hurt with happiness and accept Lee. Kakashi has opened his eyes, has made him realize some very important things.

Perhaps, in a way, it is good that he has this mission now. It gives him some time to think, to process what has happened and what he will do.

_You are my pride and my reason for fighting. Never forget that. Take care of yourself until I return._ After those warm words, there is a postscript added.

_PS – You've been letting your ankles wobble too much recently. Some work on that wouldn't go amiss. _He can't help it – whatever else he may be to Lee, he is his teacher, and he wants to see Lee improve – has vowed to make Lee the very best there is. That means that he instructs him whenever possible.

With that accomplished, he heads out. The mission is not of the utmost urgency, but the sooner it is started, the sooner it will be finished.

The details are simple. Ogawa is a tiny village, but a prosperous one – until recently. Sitting on a main trade route between the Fire Country capital and most of the eastern half of the country, it has grown up entirely reliant on the steady stream of traders and travelers resting overnight in its large inn and restocking at its travel-oriented shops. A handful of families make their home there, but they do well – Ogawa is not by any means a hamlet, and the denizens would be considered wealthy by most standards.

Until recently, that is. Because of their small size and great wealth, Ogawa has attracted attention of the decidedly undesirable sort. A band of thieves have identified the village as being prime material for a protection racket – they can make quite a bit of money off it, and there are simply not enough people in the village to defend themselves. The profits that swelled their coffers have evaporated, and they have barely scraped together the money to purchase an A-ranked mission.

_Technically, _Tsunade's voice fills his head as he thinks over the comments she accompanied the mission scroll with, _they couldn't even afford an A-rank. That's how badly this has hit them. But they got close enough to it that I'm willing to round up. It's a good cause, the mission details mean that it really shouldn't be B-rank, and it's better for Konoha to send a single jounin instead of a chuunin team. So, here you go. _

Gai already has the beginnings of a plan stirring in the back of his mind, but he will wait until he gets to the village and speaks with the denizens to fully develop it. If he thinks too much on it now, his plan will end up being based on assumptions, and that, he knows, is a dangerous situation.

He is the perfect person for this mission, though: because gangs respond to open shows of strength better than subtle threat, this is a mission that calls for abandoning shinobi stealth and making himself very visible. He will provoke a confrontation and take the gang down. If he can, he will do it without killing them – there are enough missions that require killing, no need to add to it when it isn't necessary – but if they are foolish and don't learn, then he will do what is necessary to safeguard the village. The mission is A-ranked in difficulty – apart from the Konoha price scale – because the core of the gang seems to be made up of the remnants of an old independent ninja clan. Better for a jounin to take them on.

He rather wishes he could pass it up, though. Of all the times… he could use a little time to clear his head, yes, but weeks' worth of it? That will only make things painful. He will miss Lee, Lee will miss him, and he's not happy that here will be time for misunderstandings to grow and take on their own life. All he can do is hope that Lee will understand the letter and the feelings behind it. The solution, of course, is to finish as quickly as he can and return home promptly. Lee understands the necessities of a shinobi's life, and will not ask him to compromise his mission or future missions, but Gai will cut time where he can – he will travel quickly, and work efficiently. It will mean weakening his act, but not severely so.

He can and will spend the time thinking about Lee, though. This mission will require brawn and a certain level of energy, but not very much in the way of brainpower, and that means that he will have thoughts to spare. Kakashi has helped him see beyond his own neuroses regarding Lee's age – while he doesn't share the Copy-Nin's completely cavalier attitude toward the situation, he understands many of the basic points that Kakashi has tried to show him. Shinobi have short childhoods; while by most standards, sixteen is still young, Lee has been risking his life for Konoha for years now, and childhood often ends at chuunin rank. His feelings of guilt have subsided, although they are not gone. Legally speaking, Lee is considered an adult, although that is recent – genin come of age at seventeen, chuunin at sixteen, and jounin at fourteen. Perhaps, once Lee has put a little more distance between himself and his sixteenth birthday, Gai will relax.

At the same time, though, one of Kakashi's crueler points is sticking in his mind, haunting him. _Do you really have the time to wait for him to grow up more? _

He is eagerly welcomed in Ogawa; it is tinier even than the reports have led Gai to think, a small cluster of buildings dominated by an enormous hotel. Gai would term it little more than a waystation, really, but the denizens insist that it is a village, albeit small, and it is theirs. The inn is a gigantic, solid building that can easily house over a hundred people a night, and – according to the innkeeper – it is often filled to capacity.

"Before these bastards came along," he tells Gai, weary bitterness in his tone, "I was planning to build an extension. Double the size of it. Now… ha!" Beside the inn is an enormous barnlike structure that houses the cargoes the traders bring from the country into the capital, and from the capital out into the country. There are a few restaurants, most of them serving low-quality, inexpensive food in generous amounts, a few shops for traveling supplies, and the homes of the small population, set off a distance from the inn and its cloud of commercial buildings.

It is the inn that has received the most attention. AS the innkeeper explains it, the gang has done their homework; they know how much the inn makes and how much it costs to run. The amount of protection money they have been asking for has not bankrupted him completely, but it eats into his profits so that, in good times, he makes just enough to feed his family. In average times, he breaks just barely even, and has had to dip into his savings to feed and clothe his family. And when times are bad, as they have been twice since the trouble started, he has been forced to pay off the gang from his ever-dwindling savings.

"I tried to take a stand at first," he says grimly. "Told them I wouldn't be cowed by a goddamn bunch of thugs or their scare tactics. So they set my house on fire." His fists clench as he describes the way his family are lucky to be alive now; they have been living in a couple of the inn's rooms, further cutting into profit as those rooms can no longer be rented out. Ever since the fire, the gang has been getting the money they demand. "I couldn't risk defying them again. Who knows what they'd do next?" When it comes down to it, this man, like the others, counts the lives of his family higher than money or principle. Gai is glad for it.

"You have made the right choice!" he says, gravely but with an encouraging note. "I will be your strong arm and your shield – keep your mind on the lives of your family, and I will deal with these troublemakers!" They begin to plan.

Three days later, the collectors come by on their weekly visit. Gai has made his plans, and everything is in place. Quietly, subtly, the villagers have slipped out of the village over the past few nights, using the cover of darkness to hide their movements as they gather in a series of caves a mile or so from Ogawa. The last to leave have been those most visible: the innkeeper, who serves as Ogawa's de facto headman, has only left within the last hour. The gang of thugs who have come, heavily armed, for their tribute find only a single solitary figure waiting for them, standing at the gate with his feet planted and a broad, predatory grin on his face.

Gai, for his part, is highly amused as he looks them over. Several among their number do carry themselves with the bearing of shinobi, but certainly not shinobi at a jounin-equivalent level – barely chuunin level, at best. Every thug is visibly armed – their weapons look threatening, but the open, unprofessional display of them makes Gai smirk. A true fighter, even among the criminal classes, has no need of such a display – the latent evidence of skill, the reflexes and motions of a well-honed body, all those speak better than a belt covered in knives – and that true fighter knows better than to display his arsenal wantonly. These men are amateurs. To amuse himself as they approach, he imagines what each member of his team would have to say about this display. Lee would be serious, of course, but would make observations about the potential fear hidden behind such a display. Tenten's comments would be more pointed – Gai imagines that the word 'compensation' would come up a lot – and Neji would simply be disdainful.

Even though it is well over a dozen armed men who face solitary, unarmed Gai, the fight is short, and really rather easy. He doesn't even have to bother with the Gates! It is only the beginning, though, and after he kicks the last man to the ground, he goes over to where the leader is just sitting up, rubbing at his head and groaning, and delivers the simple demand. Never return to Ogawa. The days of preying on the people here are over.

It will take more than that to make these men give up their cash cow, but it is the beginning.

That night, as he patrols the village, he intercepts two of the toughs attempting to sneak into the village with implements for starting fires; he sends them on their way less the firemaking tools, and with several broken bones apiece, to make his message clear.

Either he will cripple the entire gang, a few at a time, or they will leave. He knows that they very well could come back once he has left, but in that time span, Ogawa's finances will recover enough – they do make money quickly – that buying another mission to reinforce the message should be perfectly doable. He intends to mention to Tsunade that follow-up would be appropriate, but this gang doesn't seem particularly tough. He has high hopes for a successful mission that he can feel good about. It is sadly rare in the shinobi world to return from a mission feeling that the world is a better place for having completed it, and Gai looks forward to that ending for this particular task.


	11. Reunion: The Talk

A/N: I have one comment, guys. The story is not over yet. :3 Make of that what you will.

* * *

Gai's mission lasts for a month.

For the first week and a half, Lee doesn't permit himself to worry. He focuses on his training – paying particular attention to his ankles, of course, because with the way he trains and the heft of the weights he wears strapped around them, having an ankle turn under him is a very serious thing indeed. He runs a strong risk of not merely twisting or spraining but quite possibly breaking the ankle, and that is something he truly does not want to do.

He gets quite enough broken bones as it is, between injuries in combat and the occasional stress fracture; there's no need to court breaks that could be easily avoided.

So he trains, passing those first ten days relatively normally. He is anxious, of course – not so much for Gai's mission, because it isn't the first and won't be the last, but for what will come with Gai's return. They will talk, the letter says, but Gai's words give no indication of whether he expects or hopes for a repeat of The Night – Lee cannot help but capitalize it in his mind – or not. There will be no answer until Gai returns, and after a few days of intensely studying the letter, trying to read some indication into every stroke of Gai's firm, blocky handwriting, Lee realizes that he will simply have to wait. When he finds himself brooding, he puts the matter out of his mind by training harder, reorienting his focus onto self-improvement.

So the first ten days pass, stressful but not terribly so. The letter says that Gai's mission is expected to last two to three weeks; as the two-week mark approaches, Lee finds himself counting down the hours until he can start to expect Gai's return. It isn't intentional, and he knows full well that it is not a good idea, but his mind is traitorous sometimes, and it insists upon keeping track.

Lee considers Gai's return with a mixture of eagerness and trepidation. Once Gai returns, they will have their talk, and – as he sees it – there will be one of two results. Either Gai will say that he accepts Lee, that he wants to keep him as a lover, or he will say that The Night was a mistake, that they can't be together, and he will crush Lee's hopes to dust. A very selfish part of Lee would like to think that Gai would realize the effect a refusal would have on him and would act accordingly, but he dismisses the notion as being extremely unworthy, not to mention that even _he _knows that's no basis to be sleeping with someone.

The suspense is unbearable. The second week ends, Gai's return could come at any moment now, and Lee finds himself gradually becoming tenser and tenser. Two weeks have come and gone. The third passes agonizingly slowly.

Lee tries to force down his apprehension with yet more training; now, the desire to improve is mixed with the desire to thoroughly and completely tire himself out each day, so that he will simply have no energy to entertain the worries that attempt to plague him.

Despite rising ranks and increasingly frequent solo missions, or missions with other units, Team Gai remains remarkably cohesive, and in Gai's absence, Lee still meets with Neji and Tenten every day to train. Both of them pretend not to notice his campaign of self-exhaustion – being rather accustomed to such a thing from him, really, it's his favorite form of avoiding uncomfortable thoughts – but they indulge him on it, agreeing to longer and harder training sessions. It's very kind of them, and if the whole thing weren't so very unspoken and unacknowledged, Lee would thank them for it. But they pretend it's nothing out of the ordinary, and he can't be the one to strip away that pretense, so he simply keeps a mental tally of how many extra hours of training they agree to, and notes himself down as owing them that many favors. By the time Gai gets back, Lee will owe both of them quite a bit – and being Lee, he will make sure that he pays off that debt.

The three weeks pass, and Lee begins to worry. The long gap between the mission's estimated duration and the official worry date means that there is a lot of flexibility with time, that it is a "stay until the job is finished" type of mission, rather than a "get in, get it done, get out" type. In the latter, being late to return is a very bad sign. For the former, it means little. But Lee wants Gai home – he wants an end to the waiting, to the uncertainty, to the limbo in which he's currently suspended.

Gradually, even strenuous training stops being enough to block out the thoughts that want to plague him; he finds his mind frequently wandering down paths that sting like sweat in an open cut.

Gai has always praised him for his focus, for his ability to cut extraneous distractions completely out of his awareness as he zeroes in on his goal. This is something, of course, that cannot be fully indulged except in training – a shinobi cannot afford tunnel-vision while out on a mission – but he finds that focus beginning to fail him now. Not as critically as during the training session that led up to That Night, but it is enough to leave him feeling oddly off-balance.

_Compartmentalize, _he thinks to himself, and fails to do it.

The last week is pure and utter hell. Gai is officially late, although there is really no need for worry yet, and even though Lee exercises himself into utter exhaustion in the attempt to evade the demons plaguing his mind, he wonders every night if Gai will return while he is asleep, will find him not ready and waiting, and will be disappointed. He wants to welcome Gai home with open arms.

Of course, that all depends on their talk. Maybe Gai will not want Lee's arms opened for him – the thought fills him with dread. Is the serious talk going to be all of Gai's reasons – good ones, no doubt, because Gai always has good reasons for the things he does – why they simply cannot be together?

Or is Gai's tardiness the result of something gone wrong? The official worry date is yet a couple weeks off, but things could go wrong from the beginning. It feels disloyal to think of Gai getting hurt or… or worse… but the memory of Lee's talk with Kakashi, and the subsequent confirmation from Gai, is still sharp and painful, and Lee is aware that the likelihood of Gai's missions going wrong will only increase in the future.

The last week is hell, but at the end of it, Lee's patience is rewarded. Gai returns home triumphant, energized, brimming with high spirits, leaping into the middle of another training session with an enthusiastic round of manly embraces and joyful greetings. About the mission itself, he can of course say nothing, but he assures his team that he struck a great blow against the evil that some people do.

The reunion is joyful; even Neji, in his subdued and dignified way, seems happy to see Gai again, although his expression of relief may merely indicate that he knows that the overly-intense training sessions that have been Lee's stress relief will be over for quite a while.

The training session ends unceremoniously, with Gai declaring it over so that he can treat the team to an all-you-can-eat hotpot dinner as a celebration of their reunion after a whole month. Neji makes an attempt to duck out, which is promptly and very forcefully quashed by Gai, and the four of them proceed to demolish the shabu-shabu joint to a degree that rather makes it look like a few Akimichi descended on it.

And then afterwards, Neji and Tenten head to their respective homes, and Gai and Lee find a quiet place to have their talk. It is not an easy conversation – it is hard, it is painful, it is honest, open, inspiring. It shakes the very foundation of Lee's world, but it builds a new one – a few foundation, a new understanding, a deeper and fuller knowledge. Lee comes out of it feeling drained, a little battered, but happy and awed. The doors have been opened. Gai has spoken to him as an equal, as a lover, has confided in him things that he would not share with a mere student. He has not uncovered all his secrets – but Lee would not expect him to. Secrets are to be kept, not to be spread easily or all in a rush. Gai has bared for Lee an intimately innate piece of himself, and it is a breathtaking, heartbreaking honor.

They make love in Lee's apartment again, bodies twining together on the narrow bed, striving together for mutual pleasure. It's better than the last time, slower and sweet and less uncertain. Now, it isn't an unplanned rush in the heat of the moment, and Lee isn't completely inexperienced; as Gai's touches send pleasure shuddering through his body, he reaches out to touch in return, watching in rapt fascination as Gai reacts to the brush of scarred and callused hands. The discipline of the body is an art that they don't just practice but _live, _and Lee learns where discipline ends, where control and non-control meet and blend. There are still secrets between them, and painful truths that cannot and should not be overlooked, but there is love, pleasure, delight, intimacy. Lee loves Gai, and feels Gai's love for him.

Afterward, Gai falls asleep quickly, tired from travel, from the intense emotions aroused by their talk, from the power of their lovemaking. But Lee cannot sleep, tired as he is; even with all the things they have said, the remorse Gai has expressed for having slipped out before, the understanding of his reasons and the promises that it will not happen again – even after all that, Lee fears on a deep level that if he falls asleep in Gai's arms, he will wake alone. So he doesn't. He lies awake, listening to Gai's soft snores, feeling the soft_tha-thump tha-thump _of Gai's heartbeat against his back. The moonlight tracks across his floor, silvery-pale and subtle, and Lee thinks as he watches it move.

Gai has shown him the mask – shown him that it is there, and given him a little glimpse of what lies underneath. It's a revelation to Lee – something he has vaguely suspected in the past, but never really on this level. It radically changes how he sees Gai, how he understands the way Gai acts and reacts. Knowing this, seeing this, and feeling fairly certain that he will learn to read beneath the mask even more in the future, Lee feels his love for Gai deepen. He has seen his mentor-lover's humanity, that carefully-hidden aspect that makes him all the more _real. _It's also a little frightening, though: seeing Gai's humanity means seeing that he has fears, and those fears feed directly into Lee's own fear of losing Gai. That is increased now, and Lee understands why Gai has never been able to simply tell him about the deadly decade. It is tempting to deny it, to pretend that it doesn't exist. As he ponders, Lee occasionally wishes that the information could somehow be blocked from his mind. He doesn't want it hanging over his head, these thoughts. He doesn't want to know about the very real possibility that he will lose Gai in just a few short years.

But, he realizes, watching the moonlight slide onto the bed, if he forgets or blocks out that terrible knowledge, he may forget to treat every day with Gai as the treasure that it is. He may – God forbid! – take Gai's presence in his life for granted. And that would be the truest tragedy of all: forgetting that every moment spent with Gai is a gift that he cannot squander.

Lee will take the knowledge of their limited time, and he will treat it the way he treats the knowledge of his own limitations, the inability to mold chakra that most would consider inescapably crippling. Instead of a paralyzing, agonizing, inevitable fate, it will be motivation for change. Neji has taught Lee about fate; Gai has taught him to laugh in the face of it.

In his mind, he starts planning Gai's fortieth birthday party.


	12. The Hayao Mission

A/N: I totally can't wait to post chapter 13. Like, seriously. Soooo excited!

* * *

After the return from Ogawa, Gai only gets a few days to rest, reconnect with Konoha, and spend time training with his team before a new mission is assigned; normally, those few days are the standard separation, but after such a long mission, he is entitled to a longer rest. A full month away from home is a long time. 

However, he doesn't want to turn down this mission; it's a regular event for Team Gai, and one that they always anticipate highly.

Hayao is a businessman of the Fire Country; for years, he has maintained two residences, one of them his childhood home near the border with the River Country, the other a palatial mansion in the capital, where he can be near the fast-paced social life and ever-changing markets. It has become the tradition in the capital that those with dual residences leave the city for the summer and part of the autumn, returning as winter nears to spend the cold months in a series of parties and business dealings for the New Year and the active spring months.

Because a household travels slowly, and the roads are often lined with bandits, Hayao has been in the habit of hiring a shinobi team to escort his entourage – the first time he hired Team Gai was years ago, when they were genin, and since then, he has not accepted any other shinobi team but them. When Neji, Lee, and Tenten were genin, he was a rising but still young businessman with a small household and little wealth. Now, with Neji a jounin and Lee and Tenten set to test for the rank in the coming year, Hayao is extremely wealthy, married with a wife and heirs, and his household is large and tempting. His need for guards of rank and the level of Team Gai have grown together, and he always specifically requests them when he goes to Konoha to ask for an escort. When Tsunade hands them the assignment, she notes with a small laugh that Hayao's representative didn't even bat an eye upon being informed that Team Gai now offers _two _jounin and is therefore yet more costly to hire out as a unit. There are _very_few individuals outside the nobility who can afford to purchase the services of two jounin and two chuunin all together on what is more or less a whim, but Hayao is one of them, and Team Gai is glad for it.

Neji occasionally speculates with a dark tone that Hayao's reasons for choosing them involve an interest in Tenten that is not entirely proper. When he does, Tenten's favorite rejoinder is that between the two of them, Neji looks far more feminine than she does – perhaps Hayao's interest is in _him. _The conversation has almost become a tradition, as much as the mission has; they go through it every time they prepare to leave, and the result is always the same. Neji flushes, pinches his lips, and turns his head with a haughty snort, and Tenten laughs. That response always shuts him up, or at least reduces him to a background simmering, so long as she can get a decent variant on it going. It's almost as much a tradition as the mission itself.

They know the real reason, though, and it's far more innocent. Hayao is a dedicated martial arts hobbyist, and now his dealings have grown to a degree where he simply cannot devote as much time and energy as he wishes to his hobby. So he funds dojos so that others can learn, and tries to enjoy his hobby vicariously through long conversations with the members of Team Gai during their semiannual trips, enjoying the presence of four dedicated martial-arts experts.

Although Hayao's choice of Team Gai is one of personal preference and indulgence, though, his need for shinobi protection is not a whim; every "Mission: Hayao" has involved at least one fight against bandits, and the attacks are growing more numerous as Hayao becomes more and more tempting a target.

Despite Neji's dark predictions, Team Gai (including the Hyuuga) is generally quite fond of the missions with Hayao. Unlike many clients, particularly wealthy clients, he's quite well-educated about shinobi; he knows what sorts of things they are not allowed to discuss – such as Neji's eyes, which too many clients have been curious about – and he avoids those topics in favor of those they can enjoy at length. His conversation is intelligent; his manners impeccable but not distant. And best of all, when trouble arises, he has given his entourage specific instructions that they are to listen to the shinobi and do as their told – everyone up to Hayao himself knows that in trouble, the people hired to see to their safety are the ones in charge.

The weather is pleasant as they travel, cool but clear and dry, letting them make very good time along the road – relatively speaking, that is. To shinobi, accustomed to traveling at speed, it is an almost maddening pace, but Team Gai is experienced with how long such a household takes to move, and they know they are making good time. It will be about a week overall to reach the capital from Hayao's countryside home.

Autumn travels in the heavily-forested Fire Country are invariably noisy affairs, the crackle of dried leaves and brittle fallen branches announcing all but the stealthiest of passages. The team remains alert, ready for trouble, even as Hayao encourages Lee in a deep discussion on the merits of various types of training dummies, with Gai occasionally joining in as he makes his rounds up and down the length of the convoy. It fills the time well – and there is quite a bit of time to fill. Neji chafes at the slow pace, at the endless time creeping by as they crawl toward the capital, and he feels a surge of relief when Lee takes his turn to scout ahead and around the group, letting him return to the main group and chat quietly with Tenten.

It's impossible to keep the Byakugan activated for the entire trip, and frankly, Neji wouldn't want to; it's far too easy to see things you'd really rather not with such a skill, and so he uses it in short bursts, periodic spot checks in which he searches the area all around them for any evidence of ambushes or traps, bandits crouching in wait behind the brilliant-hued foliage. They have _never _made this trip without attack, not even back when Hayao was just getting started and had very little to his name. Bandits are too thick on the ground, too desperate, especially with the onset of winter. But as Neji activates the Byakugan faithfully, on a very carefully, deliberately irregular schedule, and searches as far as his very special eyes can see in all directions around them, he continues to see nothing.

It's unsettling.

This time, he tenses, seeing evidence of a trap… but a more concentrated look tells him that it is abandoned, half-constructed and left as such. But, dutifully, he radios Lee and tells him to check it out.

A moment later, there's a crackle as Lee reports in. "I think they were going to set up a large number of logs to roll down the slope and hit the convoy – but there are only about half a dozen piled up here. It's as though they just walked away and left it." He sounds mystified. That's about how Neji feels, and based on Tenten and Gai's expressions, they feel much the same.

"Wait…" Lee's voice comes again, when Gai's about to tell him to rejoin them. "That's not right. There are no tracks leading away from it." It's impossible to move across the leafy ground without leaving some sort of trail – unless you are a shinobi and are moving in the trees, as Lee is doing. "They've gone all around it gathering logs, but I'm not finding any tracks that go _away." _Stranger and stranger.

The other three members of Team Gai exchange puzzled looks, trying to calculate what could have brought about such a thing.

"Maybe they're just covered from all the crisscrossing tracks gathering logs," Tenten suggests, and while it's a bit too convenient, no one can think of a better possibility, so Gai simply nods.

"That's probably it! Lee, don't worry about investigating it more – we should keep pressing forward! Onward to the capital!"

As Gai and Lee fall into one of their usual 'encouragement' matches, Neji rubs his forehead and wishes he could turn his radio _off. _

Later, Neji falls into discussion with Hayao about ambushes – and from there, into a long exploration of strategies for defensive fighting. One of the greatest advantages of shinobi over ordinary soldiers is their speed and evasive abilities; being forced to stay in one spot and defend a particular person or object neutralizes a lot of those advantages, but there are still plenty of ways to overcome that limitation, and Neji finds it pleasant to discuss. Hayao, not born or raised in a hidden village, has a different perspective that often lets him offer up fresh or insightful observations.

The day passes uneventfully, except for that one strange incident, and they reach the first night's waystation, an inn set at the side of the road, ready to house travelers. Cheap, plentiful food and drink, a large outbuilding to house their cargo, and rooms for everyone. Team Gai will only need two beds; they will be on watch. One person in the inn, guarding the members of Hayao's household; one in the outbuilding, keeping watch over the cargo, and two asleep – and they'll trade off halfway through the night. This is how they will pass the entire week, and by the time they get back to Konoha, they will all be _very _glad to sleep through the night.

No attacks come in the night; it is completely uneventful, and as the caravan journeys through the Fire Country toward the capital, no attacks come. Every day, Neji spies more half-completed traps, and a couple times, he thinks he's caught some little blur of motion at the very extreme edges of the Byakugan's penetrating vision – but it is never enough to be certain, and upon investigation, there is never anything there. Gradually, the beautiful, clear days take on an almost sinister tone; Team Gai are all tense, on guard, fighting the prickling feeling that they are being _watched _and _followed._ Neji feels as though he's about to go insane; the little blurs of motion at the very edges of his vision, so fleeting and tiny, don't seem fully real, almost figments of his imagination, and for all the evidence they can find, they might as well _be _his imagination, except that he's never hallucinated before, and he's just a little too certain that he actually sees them.

It's maddening.

And on top of all the tension from this uncanny journey, Gai and Lee have a new issue that they must face – how to deal with balancing their normal unequal relationship – team leader and subordinate – with this new, more equal bond of being lovers. It's difficult; they will of course maintain that separation, because they want to continue to work together professionally, and that simply would not be allowed under ordinary circumstances. The chance that their off-duty relationship will color their on-duty actions is too great.

This is something they are prepared for, though, and both of them fight impulse to maintain a proper working attitude with each other. Gai assigns them to separate watches each night, so that neither will be tempted to abandon his own bedroll and seek company, and Lee accepts the assignments with aplomb, not giving any hint that he wishes things could be otherwise. But he cannot wait until they return to Konoha, until they can relax and have some private time to let the professionalism drop.

It will be a long week, and it is.

------------

Getting summoned by Tsunade is rarely a good thing, but it certainly isn't something that can be outright turned down; furthermore, Kakashi has discovered that he simply cannot get away with being more than even a bare minute late when the Godaime wants to see him. Her temper when he strolls in a half-hour tardy is truly impressive – between an irked Tsunade and a tiger with its tail in a splint, Kakashi thinks he would take the tiger every time.

When she sends for a shinobi, there is an unofficial but very easy to follow scale of how urgent a matter it is; when Shizune interrupts Kakashi's reading session to _demand _that he attend Tsunade-sama _right now, dammit, this is not a joke! _ he knows he needs to be there as of five minutes ago. So he actually hurries, and makes it to Tsunade's office as quickly as he can.

When he enters, her face is grave. "We have a situation." She pushes forward what he realizes is a decoded spy report. "Read that."

He does. "Shit." There's a twisting feeling deep in the pit of his stomach.

"Exactly." She's grim. "You're backup. Take as many as you think you'll need, and get going. Make sure you've got at least one good med-nin with you." She means business, and specifically instructing him to take a med-nin? She thinks it a bare step short of an emergency. "We can't afford a loss like this."

Plenty of shinobi have enemies. But if this report is right… "This is pretty serious," Kakashi says slowly. "These guys… they've taken down jounin teams before."

"That's why I'm sending backup, instead of trusting them to handle it by themselves," Tsunade replies quietly. "Make sure your team is large enough."

Ominous words. But the foe…

_Damn it. Who hates you enough to hire the Swarm? _Kakashi can only hope he'll get there in time.

* * *

A/N: whistles the theme from Jaws 


	13. RedGreenBlack

Uneasy, alert, tense, they make it to the capital without incident. That in and of itself is a bad sign. Lee doesn't know what it means, precisely, but he knows it isn't normal, it isn't good, and he, along with the rest of the team, is on high alert because of it. Something very strange is going on, and in a shinobi's world, strange almost always means bad.

They turn Hayao over to the protection of the city's police force and the special watch that patrols the district housing the rich and powerful of the capital, offering a quiet recommendation that they pay particular attention to Hayao's property – that something odd is going on, and it probably involves the businessman somehow.

Ever gracious and ready to spend more time around them – and considering the late hour at which they arrive in the capital – Hayao offers to house them for the night in his mansion, so they can start out in the morning rested, refreshed, and well-breakfasted, with a good night's sleep. They're all very willing to accept, of course; even considering that they will no longer be reduced to the slow speed of the caravan, the return to Konoha will take two days, and they would just as soon grab at the chance to sleep in real beds for the night before they leave.

Lee has brought his book with him; as they settle in to sleep, each in a private room, he draws it out, intending to read the last chapter or two by moonlight. The biographies have progressed through time to the point where none of the missions the Taijutsu masters undertook can be described; at the time of writing, they were all classified.

_Someone should write an updated version! _Lee thinks to himself. _Surely these missions are declassified by now. And an updated version could include Gai-sensei! _Then his rather more selfish side chimes in._ If they wait just a few years more to update it, I will make myself worthy of inclusion, too! _A dear ambition. Fantasizing about an updated edition with his mentor's name and his own listed among the ranks of the great masters, Lee reads on, coming to the last chapter of the book.

_It seems time itself has saved the best for last; our ultimate Taijutsu master holds undisputed the title of greatest – a hero of the Leaf, a man who could have been Hokage. There is no question that he was the greatest taijutsuist ever to be seen in Konoha – and quite possibly in any of the hidden villages. _

_But it is a sad truth that the brightest fires burn the fastest. Ooyama Haro, Konoha's Wild Boar, was the greatest of the Taijutsu masters… and the shortest-lived. _The thought of lifespan being inversely related to ability depresses Lee, but perhaps he can learn from the account of this man's life how to improve his own longevity. He settles in to read; the account is fascinating, and Lee pulls his trusty notebook out of his pack, wanting to mark down details of the Wild Boar's training regimen. Many of them are familiar, and those that aren't sound as though they will integrate well with the techniques Lee already uses.

_Unfortunately, it is in times of war that the great shinobi distinguish themselves the most – a question of opportunity and necessity. In a more peaceful time, Ooyama might have served and taught for many years, passing on his great knowledge and strength to many, but sadly, it was during the Third War that he made a name for himself. _

The accomplishments, the hopeless battles won, the suicide missions survived, fill Lee with excitement. This man truly was amazing! He finds himself starting to daydream, starting to picture himself imitating such great accomplishments, making more of his own, becoming the next great hero – who would have thought so much would be done by a single man?

_As the war raged on, the deaths of high-ranked shinobi began to tell on the village, and more and more frequently, those of lower rank would be sent on missions they never should have been given. Team Wild Boar was not immune from that fate – at the time of their dire mission, Ooyama's three students were newly-promoted chuunin in their early teens. The mission had to be performed and they were fit for duty, strong for their rank and accompanied by a great hero, and so the mission fell to them. _

_At the time of this writing, the mission occurred seventeen months ago. Naturally, it is still very much classified, but careful research and investigation has revealed at least a few details. Team Wild Boar was required to pass through enemy territory by a specific route on an urgent errand; because they faced a trek through a perilous mountain range, alternate paths were not a strong possibility. Essentially, the mission called for them to run straight into the enemy's arms and fight their way through. It was in many ways a suicide mission, but for the good of the village, they would have to go. _

_Four shinobi left Konoha on the terrible mission. One returned. At twenty-eight, Ooyama Haro fell in battle, and two of his students perished alongside him. The blow to Konoha was grievous – not only the loss of Ooyama himself, but of those who might have carried on his techniques, only one now remains to pass on his knowledge to those who will come. Maito Gai, a chuunin only but with a spirit and will clearly far greater than his humble rank, not only survived the battle that felled his sensei and teammates, but he completed the mission and returned to Konoha, wounded but determined. _

Lee fights the urge to gasp aloud. _Gai-sensei?! _To think that Gai has endured such a terrible thing – such a calamity, what must have been such deep pain – fills him with sadness and awe. To have survived a suicide mission, against such terrible odds, is amazing – and to lose his entire team at once, painful beyond words. Lee can only try to imagine how it must have felt. To think that the Gai-sensei he loves so much has endured such pain…

Gai is in the room beside Lee's; technically, the mission is over, and Lee finds himself seriously considering the possibility of slipping into Gai's room for some closeness. After reading that, he desperately wants to reconnect with Gai, to reach out to him, to touch him, to hold him, to offer him happiness. But even though they have discharged their duty to Hayao, they are still not in Konoha, and Lee doesn't want to transgress the strict limits that they have placed on themselves. He is a very disciplined shinobi! So he quashes the desire, and instead reads the last few paragraphs of the book, finishing it and laying it aside to stare at the ceiling and think. His desire to read the book began with the wish to know more about Gai's sensei, and now he knows – now he knows that sad, painful story and has a pretty good idea of why Gai never, ever speaks of the past. As he starts to feel drowsy, he considers his mental map of Gai, and how this new knowledge fits in – how it aids his understanding of Gai's motivations, attitudes, and quirks, and the reasons behind them all. If Gai's sensei died in front of him at an unusually young age even for taijutsuists, what does that mean for Gai's worldview and emotions? The author of this book – damn him! – has consistently conflated a high level of mastery with an early death, and Gai is_very _skilled; if the mindset extends beyond this one writer, then it is as good as a death sentence…

Lee falls asleep thinking, pondering, trying to decide what to do, if there's anything he _can _do. What happened to Ooyama will not necessarily happen to Gai, but at the same time, Lee can't stop himself from thinking about all the cruel parallels life likes to draw. As he slides into dreams, he makes a firm resolution: he won't let the same thing happen to Gai. On his watch, no harm will befall the mentor that is now his lover as well.

---

Morning comes, bright and a little warmer than normal for this time of year, the sky a hard, intense blue but filled with clouds that occasionally drift in front of the sun. It is an attractive day, the weather encouraging and inspiring Lee to an upbeat, energetic frame of mind. What could go wrong on a day like this?

He attempts to engage Neji in an admittedly playful conversation, with little success; perhaps it is unbecoming, but there are times when he has to admit that it is _very _fun to make a few friendly pokes at Neji's sometimes overblown sense of dignity, to see the reactions he can get from his teammate. Lee always apologizes later, when his playful moods wear off, but he supposes at least that if Gai occasionally does the same with Kakashi – and Kakashi quite clearly reciprocates – then perhaps it isn't _too _bad. Tenten doesn't seem to think so, certainly – she participates as well, and enthusiastically. Even Gai sometimes joins in on the friendly teasing, and Lee is starting to believe that Neji actually plays along, exaggerating his reactions in order to amuse his teammates.

"Really, Neji," Tenten says, grinning, "you must really be looking forward to getting home – just think of all the time you've had to go without conditioner!"

"I do not get upset when I don't ha-" Neji's irritated retort is cut off as a kunai whistles through the air – he ducks, and only barely before it slashes the air where his head just was.

All hell breaks loose.

The road that a moment ago was empty but for them suddenly boils with foes, shinobi in plain black clothes and red masks. They are fast, fearsomely so; Lee pulls off his weights with a smooth, practiced pair of motions, and begins to wield the heavy bands as weapons, but he is quickly forced to discard them in favor of speed. There are so many enemies to face! Each member of Team Gai is surrounded, swamped; every foe they manage to disable – and that isn't easy, no, each strike is hard-won – is immediately replaced by another. Neji sends half a dozen flying, whirling like a miniature tornado, but it only buys him a few seconds before yet more are upon him. Tenten sprays the battlefield with wave after wave of blades, a hail of deadly steel, but it seems to do little more than inconvenience their enemies. Lee's weights are off, and he's moving with the deadly, blinding speed that has become one of his signature skills as a shinobi, but these implacable foes are just as fast as he is!

Through the throng of enemies, he gets occasional glimpses of Gai; the mass of enemies after him seems even more formidable than those assaulting the three students, but he is fighting with all the power of Konoha's greatest living Taijutsu master, the protégé of the greatest ever to grace the village. Masked enemies fall before him, sent flying or crushed by his powerful blows. But there are more coming, always more.

Will they ever cease? Lee manages to snap the neck of one foe, and has barely let go of him before another nearly decapitates him, forcing him to dodge in a way that strains muscles – the ache goes unnoticed for now, minor strains taking a backseat to sheer survival.

Then a new enemy appears. The ones who have mobbed them wear full black clothes and undecorated red masks; the newcomer wears black, but with red bands sewn around his arms, legs, and waist, and his mask his white, pure white, with a red hood concealing the rest of his head. A leader?

He immediately moves against Gai, and the red-and-black minions back away slightly, letting their leader take precedence in attacking him, although the rest do not entirely cease. The two trade powerful blows that seem to shake the very air and earth around them, the deadly power terrifying.

Lee must still fight, but his attention now is drawn to Gai's battle, and he tries to make his way over to him, to aid his sensei against these implacable foes, but he cannot. The enemies he faces seem to recognize his intention, and they stop him, holding him back as they fight him, forcing him away from Gai.

For a second, it seems that Lee's need to join Gai was unnecessary; Gai lands a harsh blow that snaps the leader's head back sharply, hard enough that Lee thinks it may have broken—

--And only belatedly does he realize that Gai has overextended to land that blow, and is struggling to recover—

--And the leader is faster, there's a bright flash of steel, momentary, almost too quick to be seen—

--and then the bright steel is gone, hidden, buried in Gai's belly to the hilt.

A harsh jerk, a splatter of crimson, and the leader leaps back, his short sword stained along its entire length.

Gai chokes, blood rising to his lips, and then falls to his knees, crumpling, collapsing to the ground.

And the world stops.

As a child, Lee learned that red and green together make brown. Now he sees the lie of it. The crimson lifeblood pumping from Gai's veins spreads its stain upon his clothes, not brown but glistening black.

Red-green-black.

Redgreenblack.

Redgreen**black. **

Lee feels his body go very hot, and then very cold, and a roaring fills his ears. Around him, the world is still, as though time itself froze when the blade jerked free of Gai's body. Only Lee is untouched, able to move.

Redgreenblack!

Enemies are clustered around Gai – no! They mustn't touch him! Lee steps forward, thud thud thud of feed against the ground – why don't the people he was fighting a moment ago stop him? Why don't the ones around Gai turn to face him?

Redgreen**black! **

He leaps, his foot arcing out in a kick against an enemy who bends over his fallen mentor. These people were so fast a moment ago, but now, they barely move – the man barely starts to turn before Lee's foot catches him full in the face. The kick, Lee expects, will throw him away from Gai.

Instead, the man's head bursts like a melon. Gore splatters everywhere.

REDgreenBLACK.

No time for thought, no space for thought, no thought. There is a roaring in Lee's ears, in his body, filling him with a rage that is pounding too fast to be pounding – the beats of his anger run together into a solid, steady sound like the world itself rending. His fist smashes through the next man's chest, burying him up to the elbow in gore. White bandages stained red-black.

redGREENblack

The enemies have barely moved. Lee lashes out, fists and feet bringing death. He doesn't see it. All that exists is Gai, lying bloody and broken on the road. All Lee can see is the crimson-black stain on green cloth, on those lips that remembers kissing.

The warriors who were so formidable a moment ago are suddenly frail – they no longer dodge Lee's hits, standing so still for him, and his blows crumple them as though they were made of paper, one after another. Lee tears out the heart of the last one standing over Gai, then turns toward the leader, the man in the white mask. In the time it has taken Lee to kill seven of his men, he has taken one step forward.

Lee's gore-stained hands catch his head and _twist, _and the spray of blood is like a hot rain as the man's head separates from his body. For a timeless moment – what feels like a heartbeat but can't be, because Lee can't feel his heart beating, only a steady roar that shakes his entire body – he stares at the masked head in his hands.

Red_green__**black!**_

Convulsively, his palms press together. The head splatters into a shapeless wreck of gore and splintered bone.

There are no more enemies around Gai. But there are still others, those who were fighting Lee, Neji, and Tenten.

Lee will not stop until they are all dead!

He races past Tenten, nearly brushing against her back, and he kills two enemies in the time it takes her to turn reflexively.

RedGreenBLACK!

Enemy and enemy and enemy, blood and gore and guts and bone. The roar that suffuses Lee's entire being grows louder and louder, a sound more than sound, the world rending itself in two.

And then there are no more enemies.

Silence. The roar stops. Lee's body is weightless.

He's falling.

redgreenblack

His chest hurts. The earthshaking roar is silent, and there is nothing. Tightness. His lungs won't expand. His heart… his heart…

His heart.

The sky is very blue.

There is motion around him, dimly registered. Figures dressed in white. Angels?

_red…_

A figure over him. Lee can' barely see. Neji? His lips are moving. He's… shouting?

_green…_

Lee can't hear him.

…_black. _


	14. Rain

* * *

  


* * *

  


A/N: Sorry about this chapter taking so incredibly long, gang. Life rose up and bit me on the butt in a big and serious way, and then my inspiration decided to go and take a vacation. But it's finally here!

* * *

Gai and Haro are walking down a forest path together. It is springtime; many types of tree are flowering beautifully, putting out their multicolored petals and delicate sweet scents for the insects that buzz lazily from blossom to blossom, collecting pollen and spreading it through the trees. In the distance, there is the faint motion of a herd of deer, does with their newborn fawns gamboling alongside them. It is a cloudless day, the sun peeking through the leaves and a wind rustling in the canopy, occasionally brushing aside the foliage to reveal a brilliantly blue sky.

They walk in silence, their footsteps making no sound upon the soft grass beneath the trees. Haro's attention is not on Gai; he looks around the forest, a warm smile on his broad features, and takes in the sights, sounds, smells of the Fire Country's great woodlands. Gai is enjoying the scenery as well, but most of his attention is riveted on his teacher.

_Isn't he dead?_

The thought is intrusive, and he pushes it away. Of course Haro-sensei isn't dead, he's right there! Alive, well, cheerful, moving with the same dignity and grace he has always shown. For a Strong Fist taijutsuist, especially for one like him, a man built like a mountain, he has always moved with deceptive grace, a ninja through and through.

_Wait… wasn't it autumn? When did spring come? _

More questions that are shattering the beauty of the forest. Gai tries not to think about them, but the harder he tries, the more pressing the questions become. _What happened? Where are my students? When did Haro-sensei come here? _

Haro breaks the silence. "I'm afraid you won't be able to make it, Gai-kun," he says sadly, looking at his beloved protégé, the boy he'd always treated like a son. "I want to take you home, but… it seems you're not ready."

The words are harsh. "I am ready!" Gai protests, not sure what Haro means by home but never wanting to hear those words from his teacher. _Not ready _means that there's something he hasn't done right, some way in which he is deficient, and he refuses to be deficient!

The broad face splits in a soft, affectionate grin. "I mean you're not ready to let go yet," he says, his tone gentle. A strong hand, a hand that Gai has seen split boulders with a single blow, caresses Gai's cheek and moves up to ruffle his hair with a tender touch. Haro is the epitome of strength and control; not for nothing has he earned the name Konoha's Wild Boar for his strength and ferocity in battle, and yet Gai once watched him aid a mother cat who was giving birth, his powerful hands exceedingly gentle with the tiny newborn kittens.

"To let go…?" Gai echoes, confusion in his tone. He frowns, looking up at Haro. "To let go of what?"

"Of all the things that remain." With those cryptic words, Haro smiles sadly, and a cloud passes in front of the sun, cooling the air, dimming it. "Come, let us walk a little farther, Gai-kun." They walk again, but now there are clouds passing in front of the sun at irregular intervals, and the deer have vanished. The insects still buzz in the air, but there are fewer of them, and Gai begins to see fallen petals on the forest floor, bare branches occasionally sticking out.

"Haro-sensei," he asks again. "Where are we going?"

"That," Haro says simply, "is the great question, Gai-kun." He folds his arms behind his back as he walks.

"You were always my greatest pride," he says softly. "Always. No matter how fierce the obstacle you face, you surmount it with the greatest courage and fortitude. Your parents' deaths… It is a fact of life for every shinobi child, that risk, but when it came to you, you bore up with greater strength and resolution than I could have imagined in one so young."

Gai remembers those horrible times; his parents died together, on a mission. Too young and too extroverted to live alone without falling into depression, he had floundered until Haro took him in, becoming as much a big brother or a surrogate father as he was a teacher.

"My only regret," Konoha's Wild Boar goes on, "is that I never got to see you come into your true strength." The clouds are darkening now, covering the sun, leaving the forest dim and chill. The breeze that curls around them brings the crushed-green scent of rain.

They stop, and Haro turns to face Gai fully, resting those strong-gentle hands on his shoulders. "You aren't ready to come yet," he says again, looking at Gai with a loving, tender expression. He's smiling. "You're still too strong; there's too much life in you." Thunder rumbles in the distance, as though to punctuate the master's deep voice. "I am glad. Home isn't ready for you yet."

The first fat drops of rain hit the forest canopy; it takes a moment for them to filter through the leaves. A cold drop lands in Gai's hair. And then another, on his cheek.

"Go on, Gai-kun," Haro says quietly. "Go back. I'll be waiting at home for you, when you and home are both ready."

"Haro-sensei, I don't understand!" Gai clutches at his teacher's forearms. "What are you saying?" But the forest is growing darker and darker; lightning flashes, illuminating Haro's face for a moment. He's smiling, but are those tears on his cheeks?

"Later, Gai," he said softly. "You still have too much to give." And then the darkness is absolute, and the touch of his hands is gone.

The rain is the only thing that remains; it beats down harder and harder, until Gai is soaked and shivering. He's all alone, lost in black nothingness, confused. "Haro-sensei!" he calls out, but his voice falls flat in the darkness. "Haro-sensei!"

Lightning flashes, and Gai opens his eyes.

The Konoha hospital is an intimately familiar place to most active-duty shinobi; Gai is no exception. Awakening there is both a good thing and a bad thing; good because it means you've survived, bad because it means you haven't survived unharmed.

There's a nurse by the window, closing them; Gai can hear the rain pattering on the glass. "Oh!" she says, startled. "You're awake!" A smile. "I'll go get Tsunade-sama, just a moment." And she scurries out of the room before Gai can fully understand what it is she said.

He stares around, trying to get his bearings. Flowers on the nightstand; two vases of them, one filled with daisies – obviously picked wild – and the other with store-bought chrysanthemums. His abdomen hurts, a dull ache that warns him not to overstrain himself; it carries the undertone of a far sharper pain behind it, and he glances down the loose hospital wrap-top and pants to realize that there is a white bandage wrapped around his midsection from his sternum to his hips.

"Ah, you're awake," a familiar voice says from the door, and he turns to see the Hokage sweep into the room; following her are Kakashi, Neji, and Tenten. Neji's right arm is in a cast and sling, and Tenten's head is bandaged.

"Gai-sensei!" Tenten says brightly. "It's good to see you awake! We were getting worried…" She throws a look at Neji, who naturally says nothing, but Gai can see the faint look of warmth in those pale eyes, telling him all he needs to know about how the Hyuuga feels.

But he is also confused, and he turns toward Tsunade. "What…?" His voice is rusty and rough, and he suddenly realizes he is intensely thirsty.

Tsunade hands him a glass of water. "'What happened?'" she guesses accurately. "Well, do you remember the mission you were on?"

Mission. Hayao. Yes, Gai remembers. When he nods, she goes on. He takes short, careful sips – not daring to drain the glass, knowing it can provoke a negative reaction.

"You were attacked on the way back. It seems that Ogawa was not an isolated gang activity; they were the arm of a much larger organization mostly operating from outside the Fire Country," Tsunade says crisply. "An organization that did not appreciate having one of their financing enterprises interfered with. They put a price on your head, and offered it to the Swarm."

The Swarm. Gai has no head for names, but all jounin know about the Swarm. An independent ninja clan specializing in assassinations. Ruthlessly efficient, utterly apolitical, willing to offer their services to anyone who can afford their extremely high prices. If your coffers can meet their demands, anyone you wish gone will be dead. It is as good as a guarantee.

Tsunade watches Gai digest that thought. To have the Swarm go after you is a death sentence… and yet Gai is alive, and Neji and Tenten are standing right there. Before the thought can reach its conclusion, she goes on. "I received a spy report on the Swarm's mission, but you were already well into the escort job and it was too late to recall you to Konoha, so I sent Kakashi with as strong a team as I could pull together." It says quite a bit about the value of Team Gai that Tsunade was willing to make such a heavy investment of resources to try and assure their safety.

"We were too late," Kakashi says quietly, and there is regret in his voice. "We moved as fast as we could, but we were too late… it seems only by minutes. As far as we could tell, they had been tracking you all the way to the capital; the normal bandit groups were all wiped out along your route. Clearly, they didn't want anyone interfering with their bounty. But at least… I brought three med-nin along, all of them high-ranked; our mission wasn't a waste. It got you back here alive."

Now, Gai finds his voice and breaks in. "Lee! Where is Lee?" There is panic and worry in his voice. The Swarm… Lee is not with them… did he perish at the hands of those famed assassins?

"Lee is alive," Tsunade says quietly, reassuringly. "It was a close thing, but… he is alive, and in recovery."

"He… I don't even know how to describe it," Tenten puts in quietly. "Gai-sensei… you were stabbed, and Lee just… I don't know. He just went berserk."

"I couldn't even look at him," Neji says, and while his tone is flat, underneath there is a lurking fear. "I had to deactivate my Byakugan. He was… his whole chakra system was _glowing, _so bright it was blinding me." Sheer amazement. "He wasn't… he wasn't _using _it, but it was just going into complete overdrive, powering his body. I think…" A hesitation. He doesn't know what to say. "He tore open the Gates. I don't know how many. But that wasn't all he did, there was something else there too. And I don't know what it was." His uninjured arm flexes, his hand clenching in a fist. "He must have opened at least seven Gates. I thought eight at first, but…"

"But the med-nin who were with Kakashi were able to get his heart going again," Tsunade puts in, her clear tone a contrast with Neji's thinly-veiled confusion. "He went into cardiac arrest at the end of the battle, but they resuscitated him and he is still with us. Whatever he did, he didn't open the Death Gate… at least not fully."

"He just tore them open," Neji says. "I've seen him and you both open the Gates, I know what it looks like when it's done properly, and he just… didn't. One moment, nothing – his chakra was completely normal. The next, it was like the sun had fallen to earth and it was him."

"And he was moving so fast," Tenten breathes out. "I couldn't even see him. The… the Swarm," she hesitates over their name, "they couldn't do anything. He just wiped them out, one after the other, so fast there was no way to follow it. Every single one of them."

"Where is he now?" Gai asks, feeling urgency pound in his veins.

"In recovery," Tsunade says simply. "The damage was severe. His heart stopped, and the muscular decay affected his entire body."

"We nearly lost him again on the way back," Kakashi adds. "His body just couldn't fully support itself anymore. Lucky, Konoha has some excellent med-nin."

"I want to see him." Gai is not accustomed to making demands, especially not in such a rude way, but this is urgent. He needs to see Lee, needs to see that his precious protégé and love is still among the living. "I need to see him."

Tsunade thinks about it. "If you take a wheelchair," she says finally. "We managed to get your organs back into proper shape, but your body is still healing, and I don't want you straining yourself at all."

The thought is undignified, but Gai agrees; his pride is nothing compared to his need to see Lee. So Tsunade summons the nurse again, and carefully, Gai is helped into a wheelchair. It is bitter, to be so weak, but as he moves from bed to chair, Gai feels a slight, sickening tug in his belly and realizes that Tsunade is right. His body is still very fragile.

Lee's room is not far from Gai's. The nurse opens the door and wheels him in, and Gai's gaze is immediately riveted to Lee.

The boy – no, not a boy, the young man who has successfully obliterated the most fearsome assassin squad the world has known – is asleep, his body hooked up to wires and monitors that announce his vital statistics and watch him carefully for even the slightest sign of trouble. The difference in his body is so severe that Gai can see it; what he did, whatever he did, it claimed such a severe cost from his body that it literally ate away at his muscles, leaving him looking thin and wasted. But he is alive, and as Gai watches him, he stirs and awakens.

When those dark eyes open, there is a moment of incomprehension, and then Lee tries to sit up, joy filling his face. "Gai-sensei!" But he can't – he literally cannot sit up on his own, and the nurse leaves Gai near the bed and carefully helps Lee sit up, supporting his back with pillows.

"I'll leave you two for a little bit," she says with a warm smile. "Just press the call button when you're ready to go back for a rest, Gai-san." And she sweeps out, leaving the two of them alone.

"Lee," Gai says softly, reaching out to touch his hand gently. "I'm glad you're alive…"

Lee's eyes fill with tears. "Gai-sensei…" he murmurs softly, his voice wavering. "I was so afraid… I thought I'd lost you forever." He curls his hand around Gai's, squeezing weakly; he can't manage any more, and after a moment, Gai realizes that he is literally holding Lee's arm up, because Lee is too weak to do it for himself.

"Never," Gai promises Lee silently, and then he realizes what Haro meant. _You aren't ready to let go yet. _No, he certainly was not ready to let go of Lee, not when they had only just begun to explore how much they really meant to each other! "I could never leave you, Lee… especially not now." His lips curve in a warm smile, and he brings Lee's hand to his lips, kissing the scarred knuckles tenderly. "Not when we've still got so much to share with each other…" And as he says it, he feels a weight fall away from him – the weight of that brooding future, the fate that has hung in his consciousness like a great black cloud. Death has reached out to touch him, and he's cast it aside, rejected the sentence that being a taijutsuist has passed upon him. Now, it can no longer bind him.

_I'm sorry, Haro-sensei, but I won't be ready to 'come home' for a long time yet… I still have so much to do, and Lee still needs me. _He feels free, the future ahead of him bright and happy. They are both injured, and the process of recovery will be long and hard, but they have tremendous strength of will, and Gai knows that with will, desire, and devotion, all things are possible. Lee has proven that once already, and they will both go on to prove it again.

He wishes he could take Lee in his arms, but a warning twinge from his abdomen as he leans forward tells him that that would be too dangerous an attempt for the moment; so he simply moves himself closer to Lee's bedside and nuzzles his student's cheek gently.

"I will never leave you," he repeats, a soft, heartfelt promise. The dark binding on his future has been lifted, and he can feel hope and happiness rise in his heart. They have persevered, and they will continue to do so.

Faintly, in the distance, he hears a rumble that isn't quite thunder. _Very good, _Haro murmurs softly. _Live a long life, Gai-kun, and a happy one. _

He will.

* * *

There may be an epilogue; I had one planned, but so far it hasn't been cooperating. Do keep your eyes out for sidefics, though, I've got one half-written already and plans for more!


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